


Albatross

by Anonymous



Category: Stellar Firma (Podcast)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Attempted Murder, Canon-Typical Behavior, Discussion of Canonical Foot Fetish, Do Not Archive (The Magnus Archives), Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/M, Fear of Heights, One scene of vomiting in Chapter 3, One-Sided David 7/Bathin, One-Sided Trexel Geistman/David 7, Recovery, Romantic Comedy, Second-Hand Embarrassment, Secretly a Virgin
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-30
Updated: 2020-12-08
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:07:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 21,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27799726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Six months after their showdown with Standards, Trexel and David 7 join a Stellar Firma delegation to the Mars Concordant. Weird hijinks ensue.
Relationships: Trexel Geistman/Hartro Piltz
Comments: 14
Kudos: 16
Collections: Anonymous





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to A. for the beta!
> 
> This story was originally conceived for the 2020 round of [ Iddy Iddy Bang Bang](https://iddyiddybangbang.dreamwidth.org/), but I didn't finish in time. So here it is now.

A thousand years ago, the planet Mars had been shrouded in mystery. Every Earth colony attempted there had ended in failure, the Martian atmosphere being too thin to breathe and its cold, stormy climate inhospitable to humanity.

By 3160, however, almost the entire surface of the planet was terraformed for human habitation. The exceptions were a few conservation areas and nature parks, mostly centered on the poles and famous landmarks like Olympus Mons. It was at the boundary of such a landmark—Valles Marineris, the largest canyon in its solar system—that David 7 now stood.

There was a high wall, with scattered viewing niches that allowed tourists to step up and look for the bottom of the canyon. It was a long way down: over four miles deep. Such distances are nothing to a space station, of course, but this was David’s first outing planet-side and he was already uncomfortable with open spaces. To see the chasm yawning below him, the windings of that great, tortured crack in the Martian crust, induced nausea and the beginnings of vertigo. He swallowed back digestive slime and exited the niche.

“I don’t like this,” he said. “I really, really don’t like this. Trexel, are you sure this is the only way?

His companion, who had been testing the wall’s integrity with increasingly vigorous slaps, grunted.

“Trexel.”

“It’s the only way. If there were another way, I’d take it.”

“We could still make the next elevator ride.” David looked to the elevator waiting area, where a queue had formed. According to the signage, it was the sole official entrance to the park, and from there the massive conference complex that towered along the canyon wall opposite. The opening address of the Mars Concordant would take place in less than an hour.

“There’s no time. We have to beat them to the bottom. David, I cannot express to you how much I can’t be late.”

“Would’ve been nice if you brought that conviction to literally anything in your life before this point,” David grumbled. “Look, I’ll just take the elevator. You can go down by yourself.”

“Don’t be stupid. We’re a team, so we do things together.” Trexel discovered a hollow space near the seam where wall met floor. He executed a sequence of taps, cheering as he found a panel to pry away. “Aha, I knew there was a utility entrance somewhere nearby.”

He opened the panel, revealing a hatch that led to a cramped crawlspace. Beyond it was a steep drop, and darkness. “Climb in.”

“You’re ridiculous. I’m taking the elevator.” David turned to leave.

“No!” Trexel grabbed hold of David’s sleeve; David slid out of his grip easily, as he was Trexel’s superior in density and slipperiness. “No, David, I—I need you. Please. It would be so embarrassing to show up by myself—”

“You should have thought of that before you came up with this little scheme.”

“This was the plan all along.” Trexel sounded hurt, like it broke his heart that David wasn’t chomping at the bit to fall down a canyon with him.

“Really?” David was sarcastic. “You’re not just trying to avoid another person whose life you ruined? You didn’t just go with the first idea you thought of? Yes, of course, that’s why we can’t get in the elevator with the other delegates and have to break in like criminals instead.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say, David. If you choose not to trust me, there’s nothing I can do about it.”

“There is absolutely no reason for me to trust you!” David’s voice rose to a shriek. He shrank against the wall to avoid the glance of curious elevator-awaiters and lowered his volume to a whisper. “Look, I can make some compromises for the sake of our partnership, but this is a no-go. You’ve been late to plenty of things before. Why don’t we come up with an excuse and just take the elevator?”

It took a long time for Trexel to respond. He stared at his feet and mumbled to himself. Then he said: “I appreciate your willingness to compromise, David. Your request is reasonable.”

“Thank you.” David heaved a sigh of relief.

“But there’s something in here.” Trexel turned back to the crawlspace.

“I’m not falling for that line again.”

“I’m serious. David, I might have found something really wrong.” Trexel shuddered, bending. “Oh, Board! David, you need to see this. It’s horrible. I can’t tell if it’s just my mind playing tricks, you know how my mind likes to play tricks—”

“You can’t get delirium tremens when you’ve been sober for almost six months,” David retorted, but he grudgingly crouched to look in the crawlspace. “Fine. I’m looking. Happy?”

“If you could just look a bit deeper?”

“Trexel.”

“Please, David. I won’t ask for anything else the whole time we’re here.”

“I’m not humoring this any further,” said David, making to stand, but Trexel pushed him down and started jamming him into the crawlspace.

“You’re so heavy! Why are you so heavy?”

“Trexel, no!” But the inside of the passage was smooth, polished metal, and David’s natural lubricant had already precipitated his descent.

“See you at the bottom!” Trexel sent David off with a kick, cackling madly.

“I should have left you on that asteroid,” David snarled. Then he was screaming as he fell down the shaft.

* * *

Several exciting minutes later, they were ejected into a dimly lit tunnel. David arrived first, still screaming. Trexel tumbled out a minute or so after and staggered to his feet, wiping clone slime from his clothes.

“That was a slide,” said David. “You pushed me down a _slide._ ” It had been long and twisty and unpleasantly efficient. His head was still doing somersaults.

“Indeed. Tell me, David, have you ever considered being less slimy?”

“You absolute bastard. I can’t believe I’m still stuck with you.” David rummaged around his onesie, sagging with relief to find the pocket IMOGEN safely inside her sewn-on pocket. “IMOGEN, are you okay?”

David was jolted to the side as Trexel slammed a hand over his mouth.

“Keep your voices down!” Trexel looked around frantically. “No one can know we brought IMOGEN here. The diplomatic incidents it could provoke…”

David shoved him off, rolling his eyes. “Fine.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “IMOGEN, are you okay?”

 _For certain values of ‘okay,’ sure!_ said IMOGEN.

“Just hang tight for a while longer.” David stashed her back in his pocket. “Trexel, where are we going?”

“If you haven't noticed, we’re in a tunnel.”

“I can see that, but where are we supposed to go?”

“This is the problem with you, David. You want everything handed to you. Obviously we’re supposed to go, um, over there.” Trexel gestured down the corridor.

“I see a door right up there.” David pointed.

“That’s where I meant.”

“Right.”

* * *

At length they picked their way through the tunnels to a stairway, and thence a large hall extending side to side. It was a waiting area, with barred gates and benches lining the walls. The delegates clustered ahead in groups, marked by the different-colored badges they wore. At a glance, the formidable older woman Trexel had refused to share an elevator with no longer appeared to be among them.

There were at least a hundred people. Despite his earlier wishes, David balked at joining them. Between a crowd and a four-mile canyon drop, he thought he might prefer the drop again.

“Hurry up, David. You’ve made us late.” Trexel strode ahead.

“Not my fault, but okay.” David straightened his onesie, prayed under his breath, and got it together.

He needn’t have bothered. No one acknowledged them. Pointedly ignoring Trexel seemed to be the protocol of the day, and as a clone, David hardly counted as a separate person. He caught a few curious glances from the delegates, but half the glances fell away when they realized what he was. He felt both grateful for the lack of attention and furiously bitter. Then he heard a voice he didn’t want to hear.

“Hello, boys.”

It was their former line manager, Hartro Piltz, looking sharper and shapelier than ever. Hardly a scratch remained from their last encounter, when—in the chaos following their climactic confrontation with Standards—David had pulled a weapon on her and forced her to let him commandeer a space shuttle.

Trexel had been passed out drunk in the shuttle bathroom at the time, a coincidence that had seemed like catastrophe but had led to the shuttle’s fortuitous crash, their eventual rescue, and an excuse to pin the escape attempt on someone besides David. For a clone to hijack a space shuttle was unheard of, and punishable by much worse than recycling. For Trexel Geistman to hijack a space shuttle was just another Tuesday.

David watched Hartro remember all the things she couldn’t say to him, and she watched him remember that she still infinitely outranked him. They shared a tense look that Trexel missed, absorbed as he was in pointing at Hartro and gasping like a landed fish.

“You!”

“Don’t look so dismayed, Trexel.” In an instant, Hartro was smiling again. “I saw you on the western promenade just last week.”

“Whose strings did you pull to get on the guest list, you knife-toothed murder panther?”

“Murder panther! Ooh, I like that. Is it really so hard to believe I was invited?” She laughed a high, twinkly laugh. “They’re doing a special program for people who were on Executive Quarterly, and dear Sigmund insisted I come along. See, it’s on my badge.”

“I knew there was something I forgot. David! David, we need badges.”

“You didn’t forget, you just made us leave the welcoming office without one because you saw that lady.”

 _At this point, it looks like he has a problem with ladies,_ said IMOGEN.

“Was that IMOGEN?” Hartro hissed, rounding on Trexel. “Did you bring IMOGEN with you? Are you trying to provoke a diplomatic incident?”

“It wasn’t me! David insisted.”

“You know I have my reasons, Hartro.” David crossed his arms, trying to look confident and inscrutable. However, Hartro was focused on Trexel.

“I know you’re up to something.” She pinned Trexel with an intent glare. “You may not be my direct report anymore, but I can still make your life difficult. If you mess this up—oh, what am I saying? _When_ you mess this up, it had better be the kind of mistake that can be fixed.”

“There are no mistakes, just lessons yet to be learned,” said Trexel. “And you don’t need to worry, because I’m perfect and I’ve learned all my lessons already.”

While Hartro prepared to counter this assertion, David became aware that a man in a fancy suit had wandered up to their little group.

“Am I interrupting something?” The man’s voice was not quite oily, but rather uncomfortably rich, like a cocktail made with heavy cream and syrupy liqueurs. There was the suggestion that he’d go down smoothly and, a few hours later, leave one wishing they were never born. David’s skin slickened with unease.

Hartro’s eyes widened. Her bearing switched from tight and threatening to loose and supplicating, her voice going high and frantically bubbly. “Sigmund! Erm, of course not! You’re all familiar with Sigmund Shankeray, I hardly have to introduce him…”

“What’s brewing here, a little conspiracy?” Sigmund Shankeray’s tone grew frosty-sharp, an ice cream cocktail now. “Are you conspiring against the Board?”

Hartro forced a laugh. “No, no, we were just catching up! Old colleagues. But we’re done now.”

“Good.” His manner thawed, and he looked between the three of them with a bland smile. “Hail the Board.

“Hail the Board,” Hartro, Trexel, and IMOGEN echoed, while David stood by in defiant silence.

“Was that,” Sigmund Shankeray began, brow crinkling, but Hartro trilled, “Lovely to see you, ciao for now!” and swept him away.

David caught snatches of their conversation: “proprietary,” “diplomatic incident,” “ridiculous” (the last being Hartro’s deflection). She herded him to the other side of the crowd, where a younger executive with a timid look intercepted them.

David resolved to avoid Sigmund Shankeray. He had reason to expect protection, even if he was caught with IMOGEN, but he preferred to avoid the risk.

“I can’t believe Hartro’s here,” Trexel fumed.

“At this point, it might be odder if she weren’t. She’s followed us everywhere else.”

“That’s the problem with Hartro. She’s a follower. She doesn’t lead, doesn’t innovate. I think it’s why she resents me so terribly.”

“As much as I’d like to hear more of your thoughts on Hartro’s psychology, I think it’s time for the opening address to start.” David indicated the crowd, which had begun to migrate. One of the gates was open.

* * *

As it turned out, the opening address of the Mars Concordant was postponed due to technical issues. There’d been a mix-up with the circulation system, and the convention hall where the speech had been planned to take place was temporarily flooded with poison gas. It would be at least 12 hours before the air stopped being lethal to humans. As a substantial portion of delegates were human, the event organizers decreed that all guests be sent straight to their lodgings.

David and Trexel had a hotel room. David had never stayed in a hotel before. Under normal circumstances, he might have been awed, but he was feeling awe fatigue for the day and just wanted to rest. Trexel, for his part, was tired, and only shouted a little at the poor hotel clerk when the computer system had trouble bringing up their reservation. At last they were given keys and sent to their suite.

The suite was nice. It had a common room with attractive convertible seating; a travel kitchen with crockery, appliances, and a mixer for slurry; and two bedrooms, each with its own bathroom, closet, and mysterious wall-high safe.

Trexel dropped at once onto the couch in the common room, while David wandered around the suite, asking IMOGEN questions about everything. Trexel was snoring by the time David finished. David hauled Trexel into one of the bedrooms—he'd be insufferable about picking a room otherwise—and installed himself and IMOGEN in the opposite bedroom's closet, trying to relax.

The closet door made a frightening noise when David jostled it, so he tried the bed. The bed was too big and too high off the ground, so he took extra bedding into the bathroom and made a tub nest. This was suitable. When he smooshed his face between the pillow and the tub side and tightened the blankets around himself just right, he was almost comfortable.

Clones slept rarely, but they could meditate anytime. Visual meditation had become a hobby of David’s in the six months since the asteroid incident. He drew upon one of his favorite scenarios now: a dark, quiet cave looking out on a secluded cove. Waves murmured in the distance, and a humid tinge to the air foretold oncoming rain.

Though the murmuring waves sounded a lot like Trexel sleep-shouting and the humidity was better explained by his own breath trapped in the blanket, David succeeded at grounding himself in the fantasy. He pictured the damp, packed sand on the cave’s cool floor. The cave walls, which probably had interesting fungi on them. The ceiling—would it have stalactites? Stalagmites? He always forgot the difference. Stalactites, that was it. “C” for ceiling, “g” for ground.

David was deciding whether the cave had stalagmites too when his internal vision changed. Abruptly, the ground acquired an incline, which steepened as he tried to get on top of it. A vast pit gaped below him. Though it was dark, he knew that it extended for miles, much deeper than the canyon or even the void of space. Perhaps it had no end.

Trexel’s laughter shook the cave, and the earth rocked. David shrieked, scrabbling for purchase on slimy walls as he was tipped into the pit, falling, falling…

David broke free with a start. His hands trembled, his stomach swooping with fear.

When his breathing had recovered, he fished IMOGEN from his pocket and sheepishly requested a lullaby.

* * *

Twenty stories above, Hartro paced in her lavish single room.

She was not on this trip willingly, and she hadn’t been pleased to see Trexel. The opportunities she had been forced to accept—the special program for _Executive Quarterly_ alumni, Sigmund Shankeray’s scrutiny—represented a last chance to rescue her career. The strain and humiliation had been bad enough before Trexel showed up. It enraged her to think he might ruin this, too, as he had ruined so many other things in or adjacent to her life.

Once she had sought to punish him. Now she hoped merely to survive him, and maybe gain back a little of her dignity in the process.

She made a cup of tea and went to look out from her balcony. The dark canyon yawned below, the night enormous and full of secrets. While she preferred the environment aboard a space station to almost any other, she had to admit there was something rustic and charming about stargazing from a planet’s surface.

Hartro picked out constellations. She practiced progressive muscle relaxation. She sipped her tea. By the time the mug was drained, she felt much calmer, almost like she might be able to sleep.

As it turned out, she would need it.

* * *

Morning dawned dark and bleary. The mixer almost electrocuted David when he tried to make clone slurry. The clone slurry powder was miserable dry, and became a thin, lumpy pseudo-batter when stirred into water. David, unable to choke down much of it, proceeded to the first day of the Concordant with hunger gnawing through his abdomen.

Trexel, who’d been either blackout drunk or hallucinating during David’s first miserable experiments with solid food, offered him a spare packet of breakfast cubes when he found out. David was not in the mood to handhold Trexel through every not-entirely-selfish impulse he exhibited, and an argument broke out.

David argued that Trexel should have realized that breakfast cubes, a food designed for Stellar Firma citizen-employees, would not be suited to David’s physiology. Trexel argued that Trexel’s brain was full of holes and David was so cruel, too cruel, the cruelest and most ungrateful friend-clone-person-thing. They were still sniping at each other when they retrieved their provisional passes from the administrative booth outside the conference hall, but the conversation had turned to other matters by the time they entered the lobby.

As they walked, Trexel talked about the great negotiations that should be taking place even now: the Caucus of Time Travelers; the Orchidmongers’ Parliament; the one group that switched names every other cycle but consisted of the same hundred planets competing to use an antimatter mine. The conference hall’s meandering corridors housed every kind of mediation, transaction, and debate. There was even a dueling arena on the top floor for disagreements that became too heated.

“Stop, David. Take a deep whiff. Can you smell it? That’s commerce. That’s culture. That’s compromise.” Trexel sighed happily.

David, still a bit put out, said, “I thought the Mars Concordant was just a select group of planets.”

“Oh, it used to be. Then more people had problems. They saw that the members of the Mars Concordant were sort of solving theirs, and they were like, ‘We want in on that!’ So it’s grown a lot. That’s why the president of the Mars Concordant has so much power.”

“I see. Can’t imagine why the Jeluvian Lacemakers Association would need a mediator, but it makes a bit more sense now.”

“Craftspeople can get very contentious, David. Now, I’ll be headed to the roundtable for the Alliance of Risk Management Liabilities. I wasn’t invited, but I can’t imagine they’ll turn me away.”

David examined his pass. “This says we can only go to enrichment seminars.”

A shadow passed over Trexel’s face. “Enrichment seminars.” He spat each syllable like it was an unpleasant medicine. “David, have I told you about enrichment seminars?”

“You don’t need to. Here’s a data tablet with the roster.” There were a number of them on a low table under a banner reading _ENRICHMENT,_ surrounded by cheerful leaflet displays.

“Give me that.” Trexel grabbed the tablet and swiped through it, making disgusted noises. “Mindfulness, mindfulness, mindfulness. Biometrics fraud. Solar flares and you. Solving interplanetary conflicts through strategically employed sex pollen. More mindfulness. David, have I told you about mindfulness?”

“IMOGEN’s taught me some exercises, they’re pretty nice—”

“It’s dreck. Dross. Droppings. Who wants to perceive the world as it is without judgment? Who wants to let thoughts pass through their mind and fade away? ‘Oh, I noticed how I’m feeling and the way my cognition works, this changes everything somehow.’ I can’t abide it.”

David said, “I think mindfulness is good for building emotional resilience and distress tolerance. It’s helped me tolerate plenty of the distress you cause me.”

“Mindfulness is for people with tiny, tiny minds. A mind like mine, David, is so vast it can never grow full. And I wouldn’t want it to! I need the space to flee my demons.”

 _Demons detected,_ said IMOGEN, tinny and hushed in David’s pocket.

“Well, I want to attend this workshop on mindfulness and the power of attitude, and it started ten minutes ago. You’re on your own.”

“That’s not fair. We’re a team! You can’t just abandon me.”

“I’m not abandoning you, we’re staying in the same hotel room. It’s one workshop.”

“You’re cruel. You’re the cruelest clone I’ve ever known.”

“See you later, Trexel!” David power-walked away, parting the crowd with his dense muscular arms.

“I know you wanted to leave me on that asteroid,” Trexel called after him. Then he went to get another copy of the data tablet, as David had taken his.

* * *

By the time David located the mindfulness workshop, the door was locked. He sat on a bench outside and tried to hear what the presenter was saying, but he could only understand about half of it. Then they put on music, and he couldn’t make out a word.

Now he wasn’t sure what to do. Trexel was nowhere to be seen, and he wasn’t interested in any of the events about to start. Additionally, he was still hungry.

“IMOGEN,” he said, angling himself toward the wall so he could bring her out surreptitiously. “Is there somewhere to get clone food here? Or just anything I can eat?”

_Searching for local restaurants._

David squinted at the results on her display. “That’s in a city. I’m pretty sure I can’t go there.” He swallowed back hunger and disappointment. There was a cafe that looked excellent, if only he could eat the things it served.

_You may not. But we can._

“I don’t know. Maybe we should just go back to the room.”

_It’s not much of a trip if we don’t leave the hotel._

David thought about dry clumps of slurry sticking in his throat. He looked again at the cafe listing, and suppressed a longing whine. “I guess you’re right. How do we get there?”

IMOGEN, as she began the directions, sounded far too pleased.

* * *

David tackled a number of challenges: sneaking out of the convention center, boarding a train to the city, locating the cafe, and trying not to have a visible panic attack in front of the other pedestrians. However, they shrank in comparison to the one he faced now. Even paying for his coffee and muffin wasn’t as nerve-wracking, although he’d been sure that every one of the payment methods he had stolen from Trexel would be declined. But the transaction had been approved, and now it was time to be brave. Again.

The muffin was about the size of David’s clenched fist. Coarse sugar dotted its crisp brown top, which crowned a body mottled with the dark shapes of baked-in fruit. The smell made his throat well up with anticipatory slime.

“So you’re sure it’s okay for me to eat this?”

 _There is a 0.3% chance that eating the muffin will cause your body irreversible damage,_ said IMOGEN.

“Being in a room with Trexel is at least a hundred times riskier than that.” David broke off a piece of the muffin and held it up to his face, his heart pounding. A crumb fluttered to the cafe floor. “Right, here goes.”

He breathed in deeply, and took a bite.

It was delicious. The coffee, when he sipped it, was also delicious: fragrant, sweet, and lightly spiced, just hot enough to warm him as it trickled to his stomach.

* * *

David left the café with another dozen muffins and elation rippling through his noodly bones. While a constant low hum of anxiety underlay his actions, the adrenaline from his successful purchase had temporarily freed him of fear. He stopped next at a tax preparer’s office, which was offering free candy; a craft store, where he witnessed a confrontation between members of the Jeluvian Lacemakers Association and the schismatic Crocheters Guild; and a bookstore, where he lost track of time.

The main sections of the bookstore were beautiful, clean, and expensive, but David was drawn to the shabby discount bins in the back. There, among well-foxed art supply sets and miniature versions of abridged religious texts, he found a pack of instant parachutes.

All he had to do was put a little square in his pocket, and it would turn into a parachute as soon as it detected he was falling. An instant raft was included as well, but had to be activated with a button-press. It cost more than he would’ve liked; he was staying away from larger purchases, as he didn’t want Trexel to notice the charge and ask questions. However, given the number of times David had been pushed off, over, and into things over the course of his short life, the risk seemed more than justified.

After he tired of buying things, David found a city park to walk through. It had lots of trees, which he liked because they reminded him of ceilings. Beyond a secluded grove, there was a tiny garden where he could take IMOGEN out and ask her about the plants. But the afternoon’s peace shattered when a class of nursery schoolers showed up. David, who had never seen children of any species in person before, nearly lost the muffins in his haste to vacate the area.

* * *

While David learned about the wider world, Trexel was having a less inspiring day. Every enrichment seminar he entered seemed to hold someone with a grudge against him. Some he recognized from afar, and was able to avoid; others he recognized mutually, and had to run from; and still others he recognized only after they’d started to chase him. One of these last types pursued him so far through the convention center’s winding halls that they ended up in a different, auxiliary building.

Trexel managed to dart inside a supply closet before his pursuer caught up to him. This was doubly fortuitous, as a security guard arrived a few moments later and said stern things before dragging them away. Trexel could still hear the person shouting about their besmirched nebula or whatever when he cracked open the door to peer out.

The hallway was empty. The way back to the main convention center had been locked down, but that was fine; he’d find another exit.

Finding an exit was an easier goal to aspire toward than accomplish. The auxiliary building was even less differentiated than the main one, and its ceiling vents were too high to reach without aid. Trexel tried door after door, but they were all locked, even the bathroom. He passed the same wall twice before noticing a piece of paper taped to it, with an arrow pointing down a narrow corridor he’d taken for a dead end.

At the end of the corridor, there was another arrow and a turn, and then double doors with a window set into them. Trexel peered in and saw a conference room, with people at tables, a lot of microphones, and someone drawing on a whiteboard.

There was a sign on the door: _T.G._

“Ha!” said Trexel. “Those are my initials.” He opened the door.

There was no way Trexel could have known—well. Perhaps, if he’d made a few, key alternate decisions over the course of his life to date, he would have known that the letters stood for _Tadriniet’s Gemstone,_ the smallest and youngest member of the Mars Concordant. Tadriniet’s Gemstone was a consortium of independent sex toy manufacturers and designers. Its constituency stretched across galaxies, encompassing everything from small businesses with a few hundred employees to self-sustaining artisans working out of a basement-equivalent.

While child citizen-employees of Stellar Firma received a comprehensive standardized education, parts of the curriculum could be excised or switched out depending on parental preference. Trexel’s parents had elected to opt him out of the sex education module, but had never provided an equivalent substitute. Consequently, his knowledge of sexuality was a mishmash of dirty jokes, unrealistic erotica, misinterpreted anecdotes, osmosed contextless facts, clinical accounts of other species’ reproductive processes that had been relevant to his work, and all the wisdom that (mumble) decades’ worth of infrequent, furtive masturbation could provide.

Thus, Trexel entered the cyclical airing of grievances for Tadriniet’s Gemstone without the necessary background information to understand it. At first he thought he’d stumbled on an elaborate live-action role-playing game, or perhaps some experimental theater with an interactive element. As the proceedings wore on, he realized this wasn’t the case.

The consortium’s numbers had swelled significantly since the last cycle. Forty minutes in, flaws were already beginning to show in the previously codified grievance process. A simple complaint about consortial dues had swerved into debate over a recent budget change, with almost every member weighing in, some profanely. The moderator had given up on redirecting the conversation and was furiously composing a blog post about the end of civility. They had just over five hours left, and there were still a hundred complaints to go through.

This wasn’t what confused Trexel. On Stellar Firma, they generated more chaos over conference calls. No; what halted him in his tracks, idly picking through a table of sales literature while the founder of Non-Euclidean Dildo Co. lost all pretense of respecting the CEO of Crystal Fantasy Gear’s opinion, was a pamphlet called _Adult Sexual Health._

 _Adult Sexual Health_ was not an unbiased source of sexual health information. For one, despite the name, it focused near-entirely on human physiology, with a significant digression to cover the information needs of hermit crabs. Additionally, as the unusual number of brand-name products featured in its pages evidenced, it had been designed to sell as well as educate. But it was accurate, and it was comprehensive, at least with regard to human concerns. And Trexel had never read anything like it before.

While he read, his face growing steadily redder, a young human woman wandered over to him. She had a purple jacket and a mischievous expression.

“Can I help you?”

“Erm.” Trexel froze. The pamphlet was open on several detailed diagrams of gonopores. He felt embarrassment, an emotion that had grown familiar during his forced sobriety.

“If you’re looking for samples, they’re over there.” The woman lowered her voice conspiratorially. “I don’t blame you. I’m bored, too. I do beading, mostly, and it’s just me and my… assistant, so what they’re talking about doesn’t affect me. Ugh, I’ll be lucky if my application makes it into the poetry slam tonight.”

“Poetry slam?”

“The poetry slam is for overflow from the debate. You get up, you try to sway the audience emotionally, maybe the administrative council decides to listen to you.” She shrugged. “I’m not hopeful. Hey, we should grab those samples before people remember about them.”

Trexel let her propel him towards the sample table, where she insulted different types of lubricants, shared industry gossip, and complained about the vulgarity of planet-bound life. Consumed by thought, he hardly objected.

At last he was able to break away—someone she knew walked by and she ceased stuffing his pockets with samples to greet them. He headed for the door, but she accosted him.

“Wait! Do I know you? Something about you seems familiar.”

Trexel sweated. “I, uh, I just have a face.”

“I really feel like I know you, or should know you. There’s something…” She examined him more closely, and her eyes narrowed, her manner going suddenly icy. “Are you Trexel Geistman?”

Trexel ran.

* * *

David returned to the hotel suite laden with illicit purchases. In addition to the muffins and instant parachutes, he had bought a travel magazine for IMOGEN; a new set of crochet hooks; and two skeins of yarn, light and tender as clover, spun from the death-web of a Trappist Huntsman. He couldn’t stop looking at the yarn. It appeared a dull gray until one turned it in darkness, where it gained a soft, moony luster that almost hurt the eye. He was thinking about making a hat.

Shortly after he hid the items, Trexel swept through the door. David quickly grabbed a data tablet and pretended to read.

“David! How did you get back before me?”

David poked his head in the common room. “Um, my seminar got out early. I've been back a while.”

Trexel slammed himself onto the couch with a groan and kicked off his shoes. “Well, I’ll tell you, I had a whale of a time getting here. Whale of a time!”

_Time whale detected. We are all doomed._

Trexel curled up on his side and spoke with his cheek mashed against the couch-arm. “The conference hall was on lockdown. Apparently an auditorium hadn’t been vented well enough—poison gas, you remember—and half of the Vzirphean Shepherds’ Assembly passed out before someone managed to call for help.”

David said, “That’s… terrible?”

“Sure, I respect anyone who has the fortitude to deal with sheep. But that’s all beside the point.” Trexel adjusted his position to speak more easily, and his tone became serious. “David, I have been educated. No, I’ve been enlightened.”

Without waiting for David’s reaction, he went on. “You remember Loulabella Anas-Marum? Famous novelist, we did a planet for them.”

“I read about ten of their books on the flight here, so yes.”

“They’re a liar, and you shouldn’t trust a word they pay other people to write. Did you read the one with the angry masseur who’s secretly a duke?”

“ _Tempted by the Osteopath?_ ”

Trexel pondered. “There was a party where chandeliers fell on people, and someone turned out to have three secret babies.”

“Ah, you’re thinking of _The Contortionist’s Holiday Revenge._ ” Reluctantly, David was interested. The book had been a bit of a ride and he wouldn’t mind getting to discuss it. “The contortionist was an earl.”

_Feudal lord detected. Handmaidens deployed._

“Right. You know the part where the contortionist and the butler who’s been aiding his revenge plans have a spur-of-the-moment tryst in the cloak room? That scene is staggeringly inaccurate. I almost think Loulabella Anas-Marum intended to mislead the reader.”

“Well, it’s a fantasy, isn’t it? No one gets a leg cramp, no one gets tired of kneeling, there’s a convenient vial of oil in some random coat pocket…” David shrugged. “I thought the sex scenes were clichéd, but they didn’t strike me as egregious. The bit where everyone overhears the evil marquess confess to framing the contortionist for treason was less believable. And some of the digressions about ancient torture methods were really unnecessary.”

_Incorrect._

“Yeah, well, agree to disagree. Not everyone is as bloodthirsty as you, IMOGEN.”

Trexel opined, “It’s irresponsible, David. The author has a duty to inform the reader. If you can’t trust the written word, what can you trust?”

“Reputable nonfiction sources? Presumably? Unless you’re only getting your information from romance novels, I don’t see the problem. I’ve never had a sexual experience, and I think I have a pretty good grasp of—” David trailed off, realizing. He set down his tablet. “Trexel. What have you been enlightened about?”

“Erm…”

“Never mind, I don’t want to know.” David picked up the tablet again.

Trexel flung an arm over his face. Now supine on the couch—positioned so his short, baggily-trousered legs dangled over the side, his head resting on the seat cushion—he presented a weary and pathetic figure. He heaved several beleaguered sighs before speaking again.

“David, I have labored under the weight of ignorance for most of my life. But today that weight was lifted. The credit lies with a young artisan who might want to kill me and some explanatory pamphlets. Would you like to read one?” He fished _Adult Sexual Health_ from his trouser pocket.

David read the title and blanched. “No thank you, I’m informed already.”

“Don’t close your mind, David. There’s always more to learn. And I have learned.” Trexel re-pocketed the pamphlet. “Oil, for example, has a far more precise set of uses than I knew. There were some informative diagrams as well. No horses in sight, nor saws. No big curtains descending to cover people up.”

“I see.”

“I was wrong about a lot of things.”

_He often is._

“You often are.”

“IMOGEN, David, did it feel good to get that snipe in? I was more wrong than usual. The things I know now…” Trexel shuddered. “Some confusing past experiences are starting to make an unpleasant kind of sense. But that’s why getting drunk exists.”

“I thought you still had the implant?” said David idly.

“One more week. Then it’s open season on alcohol again.”

_There’s a public service countdown in every bar on Stellar Firma. Insurance rates are already climbing._

“They say your sorrows learn to swim,” said Trexel. “But I say, rragh! Where’d that shark come from?”

It seemed the topic was concluded. David became engrossed in reading about Martian museums and gardens, as he wanted to visit some tomorrow. He didn’t realize that Trexel had started talking again until he tuned into the last part of a sentence.

“—and that’s why I need to get laid immediately.”

“What?” Klaxons of terror sounded in David’s head.

“David, I will not be condescended to by a fresh-faced youth peddling nipple tassels. I need the wisdom that only comes with experience, and I need it as soon as possible. Which leads me to the question—”

David cut him off. “I’m not having sex with you. Ever.” 

Trexel floundered for a moment, mouth opening and closing. He let out a long breath.

“That was a pretty decisive rejection. I respect it! But wow, harsh.”

“Partners should be honest with each other,” said David primly.

“Like I said, I respect it. It’s just… David, you were my only option. And I thought, you know, with what happened on the asteroid—”

“We agreed to forget that.”

“Yes, but—”

“We made a blood pact, Trexel. Do you want to renege on our blood pact?” David charged his voice with as much menace as he could muster.

“I’m dropping it. It’s dropped. I’ll just have to find someone else.” Trexel looked lost for a moment, then brightened. “Yes, I’m on the prowl tonight. David! Engage what negligible fashion sense you have. I need you to help me choose an outfit.”

He ran to his room. David rolled his eyes and took Trexel’s position on the couch, putting his feet up. He took the tablet and started to read about museums again. The klaxons quieted.

Trexel reappeared in his bedroom doorway. It seemed that something horrific had occurred to him. “You’re not saving yourself for Bathin, are you?”

David almost dropped the tablet. “Why would you ask me that? Of course not. It wouldn’t be any of your business if I were, though.” Unable to resist another snipe, he added, “At least Bathin has two nipples.”

 _Oh snap,_ said IMOGEN, who had been done with the conversation a while ago but liked to encourage David’s snippiness.

Trexel glowered. “I have two nipples! I just also have a third. Three, you know, is commonly perceived to be greater than two.”

“Quality over quantity.”

“Epics could be sung of your cruelty, David. Symphonies could be composed. But I’ll spare you for now, because we have lots of fashion to get through and time is running out.” Trexel headed to his closet.

David rolled his eyes and read on. He was distracted, however, as he had gone into a daydream about meeting Bathin at a museum.

Ahh, meeting Bathin. Perhaps their hands would brush as they reached for the same audio guide button. Perhaps, having established their mutual love of culture, they would bond further over hot beverages in the museum’s attached cafeteria.

Perhaps Bathin would lean forward and say, “I’ve never connected with someone so naturally before,” and David would lean forward too and say… something. He didn’t know what. It would be better than anything Trexel could come up with, though. He was sure of that.

* * *

Hartro’s day had not gone well. The Executive Quarterly alumni program incorporated a predetermined set of meetings, workshops, and lectures as well as company bonding activities. While she had, in her opinion, risen splendidly to meet each challenge in the first day’s agenda, the whole thing had proven so draining that she’d chosen to nap in an empty office room rather than attend the one elective seminar she was allowed per day. Now she was groggy and had slept through dinner.

Ten of the hotel’s 17 bars offered free hors d’oeuvres. Hartro was tempted to just eat in her room, but she saw an advertisement for one bar’s expanded patio area and decided to go out instead. Sigmund Shankeray was taking little groups of executives out for dinner every night, but her turn wasn’t until later that week; she wasn’t going to run into them at the hotel unless they came back for a drink. Which they probably wouldn’t, unless the night got really crazy, and she’d be headed to bed before then. So it was fine. Hors d’oeuvres.

At the bar, she snagged three little puff pastries with interesting fillings and was perusing the drinks menu when she heard a familiar cackle.

Swallowing back dread, Hartro turned just in time to witness Trexel chatting up a disinterested patron. When this person dismissed him, he turned to a couple a few meters away and started on them. Hartro couldn’t make out what he was saying, but his manic energy was unmistakable. Trexel was on a mission.

While Hartro watched, the couple’s initial bafflement turned to disgust, then outrage. One of them had to physically restrain the other from assaulting Trexel. Having shown this mercy, the man spat at Trexel’s feet and escorted his still-raging partner across the bar.

Trexel, undiscouraged, began scanning the room for another victim. Hartro knew she had to intervene. She knocked back the rest of her drink, put on her sternest face, and set out towards him.

As she moved closer, she was hit by a wall of cologne scent, so strong it almost made her gag. But she soldiered on.

Trexel hardly noticed her approach. The bar was not well-lit. For a moment, he looked at her like he didn’t recognize her. When he opened his mouth, she was afraid he would try to involve her in whatever idiotic venture he’d cooked up.

Instead, he said, “What are you doing here?”

“I _was_ having a lovely evening, until I saw you antagonizing people. What are you doing here, Trexel?”

“None of your business.”

“Oh, I wish it weren’t my business, but experience has proven I can’t afford to ignore you.” Hartro stared him down, inching as close to him as she could suffer. “If you’re looking for company this evening, I’m sure Sigmund would love to join us. I can have him here in a minute.”

Trexel gasped. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“Try me,” she bluffed.

After a minute or so, he backed down. “If you must know, I’m furthering a personal goal and performing an act of charity at the same time. Well, hoping to perform one.”

“Really.”

“Really! You know, people from noble families used to sell their children’s virginity. I can’t pin down the exact figure mine would be worth, but I’m sure it’s substantial.”

“Noble families,” Hartro sneered, then froze as understanding misted over her. “Virginity? You’re trying to find someone to _sleep_ with?”

“Keep your voice down,” said Trexel out the side of his mouth. “But yes.”

Possibilities flashed before Hartro’s eyes, each more distressing than the last. Trexel flirting with the wrong delegate’s spouse. Trexel dueling the wrong delegate’s spouse. Trexel romancing a school of fish—then, it turning out that the fish were corporate spies, and the fish escaping with important Stellar Firma trade secrets. Trexel accidentally blowing up the planet on a quest to fulfill some repellent sexual fetish. Trexel propositioning Sigmund Shankeray.

She pictured the last scenario in such lifelike detail that she felt sick to her stomach. Oh, Board, she could almost hear the smooth, icy retorts. The _shouting._

Then she got an idea.

“I absolutely know what sex is, conceptually and practically,” said Trexel. “I’ve known this entire time. I just haven’t found a partner worthy of me yet. Um, worthy to have my charity bestowed upon them.”

“Worthy of you,” Hartro echoed. Wheels turned in her head. The conclusion she was hurtling toward nauseated her, but she couldn’t stop going there, even as she hated the very sight of him.

“I am a Geistman. But, hey! I’m on the market.”

“Trexel,” said Hartro, “let me make something clear to you. Your market value? It’s zero. No one with the barest hint of standards would consider you an acceptable sexual partner.” She watched his face fall and made up her mind. “Well, almost no one. There’s one exception.”

“Wonderful,” said Trexel stiffly. “Who is it? This cologne won’t stay fresh all night.”

“It’s me, you idiot.” Hartro gave him a look of pure contempt.

He stared at her for a moment. Then he burst out laughing.

“I’m serious, Trexel.”

“Sure.” He was smiling, looking around like he’d find someone to be in on the joke with. She might do the same if their positions were reversed, but for some reason his reaction infuriated her.

“Believe it or not, I am willing. You won’t get a better offer.”

“Very funny, Hartro.” Trexel shook his head at her, still provokingly amused. “You think I can’t do it, but I’ll prove you wrong. Oh, I’ll prove you wrong!” With these portentous words, he ran off.

Hartro went to locate a cocktail menu. She felt like having something strong.


	2. Chapter 2

Trexel did not prove Hartro wrong. Several hours later, he returned to the same hotel bar, having been rejected in one way or another by every stranger he chatted up. Among them:

  * A mop; 
  * A bartender, who thought he was trying to order drinks with humorously bawdy names;
  * Three members of the Soil Neutralizers’ Guild, one of whom recognized him as a notorious soil polarizer;
  * A polar bear, who he had regrettably assumed to be a human in a polar bear suit;
  * A statue in a poorly lit courtyard area;
  * A second mop.



Traffic had died down at the bar, and hors d’oeuvres were no longer being served. Drinks, however, continued to flow. Hartro was still there and fairly drunk by this time. Trexel thought he’d have to grovel for her attention, but her eyes lit up when she spotted him and she ran across the room.

Well! At least someone was happy to see him, even if it was because she wanted to hurt and degrade him.

“Trexel!” she exclaimed, pulling him into a one-armed hug and aiming what might have been an air kiss at his cheek. While wine was rich on her breath, her balance was mostly steady, her gaze alert and only a little clouded over. “You’re back.”

“I, uh, yes. I thought you’d be angrier.”

“I was angry when you laughed at me before, but you’re so pathetic, I can’t stay mad.” She hiccupped, then cleared her throat. “I don’t know why I worried. Come, let’s talk.”

She hustled him through a side door and onto a deserted patio. It was quiet, the buzz of the bar fading away. This side of the hotel faced into the rock, but environmental controls made it feel like they were out on a mild, breezy night.

“Sit.”

He sat on a bench, and she sat on the one orthogonal to it.

He couldn’t remember Hartro looking less than polished, but the evening’s merriment had taken a toll on her hairstyle. Wispy curls frizzed around her temples, limned in gold by the patio lamps. Her makeup had smeared a little, and her eyes were tired. He tried to concentrate on what she was saying.

“—a few days, a vacation of sorts, and you’re sober. The circumstances are ideal, really.”

“There’s just one thing I don’t understand,” said Trexel. “Why do you think I’d want to do this with you?”

Hartro threw her head back and laughed. “Why wouldn’t you? I’m young, beautiful, successful—”

“You tried to kill me and David 7!”

“Trexel, we have been over this a hundred times. That was training. I tried to train you and David 7. It’s not my fault you mistook my intentions. Besides, even if I had tried to kill you, David—well, I think we’re even by now. Can’t bygones be bygones?”

She leaned closer as she talked, brushing his shoulder or knee occasionally. This was, Trexel considered, probably the most she’d ever touched him without hitting him or taking off her shoes. It was certainly the gentlest way she’d touched him.

"What do you say, Trexel?"

She moved forward after she finished speaking, and her hand sought his.

“Setting aside the fact that you’re a liar,” he said, “you’re mean to me. You’ve always been mean to me. I have it on good authority that I’m supposed to have sex with someone who’s nice to me.”

“I can be nice.” She laced their fingers together.

“To other people, maybe.”

“I can be nice!” She darted in and pecked him on the cheek. “See, wasn’t that nice?”

“That was barely anything. You did it as fast as possible so you wouldn’t have to touch me.”

“Don’t be silly.” Her face was still very close. Her thumb rubbed over his knuckles, a caress. “I’m touching you right now.”

There was a tense pause before he yanked his hand from her grip. “Hartro, you’re acting very, very weird. You need to get your blood recirculated, or at least get some sleep.”

“I hate that you’re being the voice of reason here,” said Hartro. “It’s disturbing. But fine. We’ll resume this negotiation tomorrow.”

She extricated herself from the bench, stood, and hesitated a moment too long before apparently remembering the way back to her room.

Trexel waited until the unsteady clacking of her heels had faded into the distance, then slumped forward, resting his head in his hands. He could still smell her: fading perfume, hairspray, and a trace of spilled wine.

Though nothing had happened between them, he already felt screwed.

* * *

A fire alarm went off in the middle of the night. Half the hotel was evacuated, and it took several hours for the threat to be cleared. Everyone trudged back to their rooms in time to catch a boring virtual address from Mitsy Van Schuten, now interim president of the Mars Concordant. Her husband had mysteriously disappeared about ten months previously. David thought of the god gun and tried not to feel guilty.

It took a while, but David managed to fall back into a trancelike state. He might even have slept. His thoughts tended to get stranger when he slept: lots of screaming, more visions of falling. It was a relief to find the instant parachutes still stashed in his mattress.

Trexel was strangely jumpy and distracted at breakfast, enough that David ate an entire muffin in front of him. He couldn’t seem to get more than a few sips of coffee down.

“What’s the matter with you?” said David.

“Nothing! I’m great. I’m not thinking about having sex with Hartro.”

David blinked. “Didn’t need to know that.”

“There’s nothing to know! I’m not thinking about that. In fact, I’m not thinking at all.”

_Redundant statement detected. We can already assume that at all times._

David said, “You should try to eat, at least. I don’t know about you, but I have a busy day of enrichment seminars planned.” Though he was actually planning to visit four museums and a garden, he felt he should spend some effort on the lie.

“Hrrm,” said Trexel, but he picked up a breakfast cube to stare at.

* * *

Sneaking out again was much easier than the first time. Once he got going, David had a wonderful time. He toured the garden and two museums, and was considering a third museum when IMOGEN began to emit a loud beeping noise.

“What’s wrong?” But she couldn’t answer. “IMOGEN? IMOGEN!”

In the convenient darkness of an alley, he identified the problem. IMOGEN, in her pocket form, had been away from Stellar Firma too long and was almost out of battery. He had to find somewhere to charge her.

* * *

Trexel had intended to locate Hartro that day and continue their conversation, but fate interfered with his plans. From morning well into midday, he was stalked by a mysterious figure, masked and swathed in black.

They didn’t act like the people who had confronted him before. Instead they watched him from a distance, or from a height, or through glass. Always just in the corner of his eye; always far enough away that they could easily disappear, escaping into a crowd or ducking behind a leaflet display.

At first he thought he was being paranoid. But when he turned while stretching during an over-long seminar and met the figure’s gaze through the conference room door’s little window, he knew he was in trouble.

* * *

David found a public library whose amenities included private study carrels with charging ports. He had to sign up for a card. The Martian librarian’s friendliness evaporated when he gave his name as Trexel Geistman, but they helped him access a carrel anyway, frowning suspiciously throughout.

David pretended to study for a good quarter-hour before he dared to take IMOGEN out. Her distress light blinked sadly, feebly, and her display hardly lit up enough to read the “DANGER, LOW BATTERY” messages scrolling over it. But she fit in the charging port.

Nothing seemed to happen at first. David watched, anxious, as the light stopped blinking and stilled. It seemed to grow a little stronger, which perhaps meant she was charging? It was hard to tell. Her display wouldn’t come up anymore.

He turned back to the stack of books he’d checked out for a cover story. He tried to focus on reading, letting himself exist in the text and the motion of his own breathing. From a distance, he could feel the librarian watching him. Slime collected at his glands and dripped.

Then, all at once, every light in the building went out.

* * *

IMOGEN was fine. The library power system was not.

Luckily, the ensuing confusion provided enough cover for her and David to make their escape.

* * *

Trexel delivered himself from the seminar through a ceiling vent. Though the mysterious figure saw him do it, he wasn't too fussed. While few talents came naturally to Trexel, there were two exceptions that did: pissing off everyone around him and navigating vent systems.

He found his way quite easily to the other side of the building. From there, he scaled a few floors, went down another floor to confuse his pursuer, and popped out an unfamiliar wall vent in no time.

As luck would have it, Hartro had just left a meeting down the hall. Trexel watched her make small talk with two colleagues sporting large, fresh bandages, and felt a flutter of anxiety.

He clenched his teeth and told himself he had nothing to be shy about. She'd asked him; she wanted it; she wouldn't laugh in his face. Or, at least, she wouldn't laugh in his face about this. Probably.

Still, he spent a longer time brushing vent dust from his clothes than he might have otherwise.

It was easy to catch up with Hartro, as she hung back from the group. She was limping, too; he spotted a bandage on her leg. He tried to sidle up to her casually, but her shoulders stiffened when she noticed him and she stopped short.

“There you are, Hartro.” Trexel chuckled nervously. “I’ve been looking for you all day.”

“And now you’ve found me.”

“Haha, you don’t sound happy about that. I was wondering—”

“Stop,” Hartro interrupted. “Before you say more, just stop. I need a minute.” She closed her eyes, looking weary. Trexel fidgeted while she took herself through a deep breathing exercise.

“What happened to your leg?” he asked, when she had opened her eyes.

She flinched. “Hot coal test. I can’t say more. You can go ahead and ask your question now.”

“Er, yes.” Trexel tried to sound nonchalant. “Does your offer from last night still stand?”

She pinched the bridge of her nose and breathed deeply again before replying. “My offer still stands.”

“Excellent, excellent. So—”

She interrupted him, suddenly steely. “I just have some conditions.”

“Of course.”

Hartro held up her hand. “First off, if you’re doing this with me, it’s just me. I don’t want to see you out trawling bars for threesomes again.” She glared at him until he nodded in acceptance. “Second condition: you can’t tell anyone. If a word of this arrangement gets out, I will personally see to it that you—well, you’ll be sorry.”

“Who would I tell?” said Trexel piteously. “David hardly listens to me.”

Hartro, ignoring him, continued. “Third condition: this is a time-limited affair. Once we’re off-planet, the whole thing is over. And don’t come to me; I’ll seek you out. I have a schedule, I haven’t signed up to be your sex nanny.”

“I think I had a nanny once, but it might have just been a particularly large hat tree. I hugged it too hard and a bunch of hats fell on me. I was trapped under those hats for three days.”

“Trexel, just when I think you’ve exhausted the well of sad stories about your childhood, another one bubbles up.” Hartro studied him. For a second he thought she might express sympathy, but instead she said, “I’ve thought of a fourth condition: hygiene. You need to shave, you need to bathe, you need to use soap all over your… parts. And no more of that awful cologne.”

“Way ahead of you!” Trexel had showered twice that morning and forgotten to apply the cologne. “I’m clean as a plate. So, do you want to…”

“Right now? I was woken up early with a hangover, I’ve been in meetings all day, and there may be a second degree burn on my leg. Canoodling is the last thing on my mind.” Hartro sighed, looking weary and un-steely again. “Give me two hours.”

* * *

Two hours, it happened, was just the time needed for Trexel’s mysterious masked stalker to catch up to him. He had taken another shower and was loitering in a hotel lounge, a few floors away from Hartro’s room.

She’d instructed him to sneak in through the dumbwaiter. The rooms Trexel shared with David didn’t have a dumbwaiter. He was pondering this unfairness when someone hauled him brutally up from the chaise.

“On your feet, you bastard!”

“Huh?” said Trexel, and the person grabbed him and tried to throw him against the wall.

He twisted out of their grip and swiped a cushion to defend himself with, held it up like a shield. The person got around him and got him in a chokehold, lifting him up while he kicked and struggled. The cushion dropped.

He scrabbled at the arm around his throat, wheezing with relief when he managed to breathe. His efforts hadn’t won this mercy, though; his assailant had granted it, and they held him in an implacable grip.

“What do you want?” Trexel asked, when he could speak again.

“I have come to collect what is rightfully mine.” The person spoke right next to his ear, breath hot through the mask in a way that was likely supposed to be intimidating.

Trexel squirmed, talking quickly and breathlessly. “Is this about those cursed jewels? Because I gave them away. Well, it was more that I hid them in someone’s luggage, but the effect’s the same when you really think about it—”

“No.” The person flexed their arms in agitation, making Trexel choke before they remembered themselves and loosened up. “This is about something priceless.”

Trexel’s mind ran a half-dozen improbable scenarios at once. Cautiously, weighing each word as it left his dry mouth, he said, “My… virtue?”

“What? No!” They recoiled, releasing Trexel so forcefully that he fell to the floor. While he scrambled behind the chaise on hands and knees, they took a couple of disgusted steps back. “No. I’m reclaiming _my family’s honor,_ which you stole when you ruined my grandfather’s memorial planet.” They stared at him as if expecting him to remember.

Trexel peeked out from behind the chaise. “Um, right. Which one was that again?”

An explosive sigh. “Shlundus Paepaticus?” When he just looked blank, they prompted, “The bird sanctuary?”

“Oh, the birdwatching planet. I did a great job on that! Nothing exploded—at least, nothing exploded in a way that could be construed as my fault—and the bird seemed happy. Watchable, too. Downright photogenic. What’s the problem?”

Through gritted teeth, Shlundus Paepaticus’s grandchild said, “There was supposed to be more than one bird.”

“Well, you should have been more specific.”

“I didn’t think I needed to!” they shouted. “Anyone else would have looked at the phrase, ‘bird sanctuary,’ and thought, right, a sanctuary for _birds._ A nice, welcoming planet where lots of birds can live, migrate, and build nests for their young. Not a habitat for one bird, plus a massive gallery of dubiously bird-themed depictions of Trexel Geistman.”

“I thought the ceiling mosaic was charming,” said Trexel wistfully. “All those legs.”

“Shut up!” The person was fast losing patience. They took a step closer to the chaise, then another. “You’re the last piece remaining in the puzzle of my revenge. I’ve rescued the bird—you’re lucky it was a hawk, by the way—”

“A hawk? Isn’t that a type of mollusk?” Trexel cast a glance toward the nearest door. It was a stretch, but he might be able to make it if he got a head start.

“—I’ve rescued it, and it’s doing well. I hired a band of rogue environmentalists, and they’re re-terraforming the planet as we speak. But I can’t let your insult to my grandfather’s memory stand.” They towered over him now.

“I understand,” said Trexel, nonplussing them for a moment. He continued, eyeing the door over his shoulder, “I’d be upset too, if I ordered a birdwatching planet and someone made me a mollusk-watching planet instead. But you’ve got the wrong man; this is the Build Team’s fault. I told them a bird. I remember putting a bullet point, very specific: _one bird._ So you should find the Build Team and wreak your revenge on them instead.”

The person said, “I’ve been around you for five minutes, and I already hate you so much that I think I’d kill you anyway, even if what you just said made any sense.”

“Could you be persuaded that sparing me would honor your grandfather’s memory?” Trexel was trying to edge toward the door.

“Feeding you to space vultures would honor it far more appropriately.”

In the next half-minute, three events happened almost at once. First, Trexel made a run for it. Next, Shlundus Paepaticus’s grandchild leapt at him, for the first time pulling out a large dagger. Finally, Trexel’s flight was arrested when he collided with a solid mass in the threshold, a third person who had been observing the scene from the hallway undetected.

“You!” He looked up at a familiar face. It was the purple-jacketed human woman from the Tadriniet’s Gemstone presentation, whose bead business still confused him.

She grinned at him. “Yep.” It was a nasty grin.

“Can you, erm, move, so I can escape being stabbed to death?”

“Nope.”

“Thank you,” said Shlundus Paepaticus’s grandchild, bracketing Trexel’s back. “If you hold him still, I can—”

“Absolutely not. I’m here for _my_ revenge.” Bead girl looked Trexel over coldly. “This idiot ruined my livelihood.”

“While I’m sure that’s awful, he defiled my entire family line, so…”

“He made my spaceship self-aware,” bead girl interrupted. “I was just flying along one day, enjoying my solitude and doing my beads, and suddenly there was this indescribable cosmic event and my spaceship started talking to me. And it had depression.

“Has your life ever depended on the outcome of reasoning a spaceship through an existential crisis? I’m so sick of the word ‘qualia,’ I feel queasy just saying it. Didn’t help that the whole thing came about because _he_ killed a star and triggered a galaxy-wide metaphysical meltdown. I mean, talk about the whims of an uncaring universe.

“I had to let Poppy—she ended up choosing a name, actually, and a gender—I had to let her start working with me so she could ‘find a higher calling through art.’ But she’s horrible at it; she doesn’t understand the concept of scale, and her designs don’t make any sense. Nothing’s selling. I had to beg my consortium for financial assistance, literally beg them in verse, and they still rejected my application.”

“Not really seeing how this is my problem?” said Trexel.

“It’s not your problem, but it is your fault. And you’re going to pay.” From her jacket, bead girl drew a wicked-looking pair of wire cutters. Trexel looked at them, looked at the dagger over his shoulder, and perceived that he felt menaced.

Then the angry grandchild put in, “That doesn’t sound too bad.”

“Excuse me?”

“That’s just a normal misfortune, not an act of malice like what he did to me. You didn’t have to prostrate yourself at the Tower of Winds for seven days and nights or plant a bzolis flower on the highest peak in Yishrenna to absorb the stain of disgrace.” They shrugged. “You got a free assistant and a new perspective on your craft, plus what sound like some useful insights on the nature of consciousness. If you can find a hook to market your new work, you’ll be fine.”

“So people need to have it worse than you before they can take revenge?”

“If they’re trying to take my revenge, then yes.”

Bead girl scoffed. “Good to know! Guess I’m lucky that the ultimate revenge evaluator is here to judge me. Do you have a nose under that mask, or is there some other appendage you use to look down on people?”

The grandchild gasped. “How dare you.”

“No, how dare you! It’s clear you’ve never worked a day in your life.”

“I don’t _work,_ I have a _purpose._ Maybe, if you had a purpose, your spaceship wouldn’t be depressed.”

“Right, that’s it,” bead girl growled. “I’m challenging you to a duel. Winner gets to kill Geistman, loser pays for Poppy’s therapy.”

“I accept. I’ll meet you at the dueling arena in ten minutes.”

“What about me?” said Trexel, as his would-be killers headed toward opposite exits.

“I’ve tracked you across a dozen star systems,” said the grandchild, glaring at bead girl. “Go run away like you always do. I’ll catch up with you soon enough.”

“Yeah, don’t worry about us,” said bead girl sweetly. “There’re only so many hiding places here. I’ll have no trouble finding you after I kick this pompous nitwit’s ass.”

With a last, contemptuous shared glance, they left. Trexel got out while he could.

* * *

Some time later, Trexel emerged from the dumbwaiter into Hartro’s room. While he had intended to impress her with a quiet appearance, there was little dignity in his arrival. The dumbwaiter was a tight fit; he came out feet first and had to wiggle the rest of the way out, almost getting his shoulders stuck in the doorway.

When he finally freed his whole body, Hartro was standing there laughing at him.

“Oh, don’t give me that look,” she said, wiping away a mirthful tear. “You have to admit that it’s funny.”

“It’s been a hard two hours, Hartro. I don’t have the heart for your games right now.”

“Fine.” She rolled her eyes, though a smile still played on her lips. “Let me get you a drink. I’m sure your exertions have left you simply parched.”

He took a seat on a two-person couch and watched her rattle around the tiny kitchen, trying to calm himself in the meantime. Hartro looked refreshed and seemed to be in a much better mood, whether it stemmed from his discomfort or not. The bandage on her leg was gone, the skin beneath it clear and whole.

“Don’t look at my legs, Trexel.”

“I wasn’t looking at your legs.”

“I can feel your eyes on me, like little smudgy fingerprints on a glass. Speaking of.” She filled a glass with tap water and brought it to him, then sat down next to him, leaving a polite space between them.

“I can’t help but notice that you’re letting me touch the glass.”

“That was a quip, not an analogy.” She watched him sniff the water suspiciously. “Come on, you would’ve seen me poison it.”

He narrowed his eyes at her, but he took a sip. When nothing terrible happened, he took another. A pleasant sequence of sips turned into gulps. He _was_ parched.

“Exactly how virginal are you?” Hartro asked, pressing a fingertip to his knee. As he choked, she added, “I want to know what I’m dealing with here.”

Once he had stopped coughing, Trexel cleared his throat and managed to reply, “Extremely virginal. As pure as the driven snow. The snow that’s not driven, actually, because it’s never been acted upon.” (This wasn’t strictly accurate, but it was close enough to the truth.) 

“You’ve never even kissed anyone?”

“Of course I’ve kissed someone, Hartro. I’m not a mollusk.” He laughed, and mimed a beak when she looked at him bewilderedly. “I just haven’t done anything beyond it.”

“I guess that’s not too surprising,” she muttered. “You’ve gotten yourself off before, at least?”

“Been there, done that, got the scars to prove it.”

“Okay, we’ll address that later. And you’re sure this hasn’t all been some ill-considered joke?”

“Look at me, Hartro. Do I look like a liar to you? Don’t answer that. Do I look, to you, like a man who would lie about this?” He saw her expression and huffed. “Never mind. My ignorance speaks for itself, or so I thought.”

“It’s hard to tell! You’re always making double entendres.”

“I thought those were references to long-running, very popular inside jokes.”

“Fair enough. Still, you’ve said things that betray a deeper understanding of—you know what, we don’t have time to unpack everything you know, don’t know, or know subconsciously but have repressed.” Hartro shook out her shoulders, visibly steeling herself. “Let’s get on with it.”

Neither of them moved.

Trexel said, “By ‘get on with it,’ you mean…”

“Ugh, this is unbearable! Get on with some touching. Give me your hand.”

He did. She squeezed it and came closer, so he felt the heat of her body. Though Trexel had been physically restrained in a much more intimate way not half an hour previously, the neutral contact unsettled him.

It’d been a long time since anyone had been this close to him—at least, since anyone had been this close to him on purpose and without unambiguously malicious intent. He realized, distantly, that he was shaking.

“Hartro—”

“Give it a second.”

He waited. After a minute or two, he could better bear her presence, and her grip on his hand loosened. She nudged her leg against his and put her head on his shoulder.

“This is, um. This is nice.”

“I suspected you’d think so.” He felt her jaw move as she spoke.

“You smell nice.” She did, like lotion or something. He tried to sniff her hair unobtrusively.

“People don’t want to be told how they smell, Trexel.”

He tried again. “Your, uh. Your skin is very—”

“I’ve told you not to talk about my skin.”

“I’m trying to give you a compliment!” He re-laced their fingers, agitated. “You’re very soft. How’s that?”

“Oh good, that’s what everyone likes to hear, that they’re _soft._ Poached eggs are soft. Pillows are soft. Do I look like a pillow to you?”

“No, no, the opposite. You’re sort of using me as one.”

“And you make a dreadful pillow.” She straightened her head and looked at him. “But, you know, this isn’t just about hand-holding and giving me lukewarm compliments. There are a lot of topics to cover.”

“Right. I’m guessing we should probably kiss at some point.”

“I suppose.”

With the subject on the table, it seemed an opportune moment to kiss her. He tried, but she evaded him.

“I don’t want your slobber all over me.”

“Hartro,” he said, frustrated, “if I understand how this goes, we’ll be sharing a lot worse than spit.”

“About that… I thought we could try some alternatives to the usual options.”

“What type of alternatives?” said Trexel, his brow crinkling, but she held up a hand before he could start listing ideas.

“Well, there are things you can do without taking your clothes off. And things that involve less traditional parts of the body, such as legs and, ah”—she coughed delicately—“feet.”

“What is it with you and feet? I’m not putting your foot in my mouth. I’m not putting my foot in your mouth, for that matter. If having or putting someone’s foot in your mouth counts as sex, we’ve been doing it for years. I’ve had sex with David by that metric. _You’ve_ had sex with David. Most importantly, though, you’ve had sex with me.”

“I was thinking more,” she glanced down his body, “feet on groins. Clothed feet, clothed groins. That way everyone is covered up, only one or two socks get ruined—”

“What about trousers? In this scenario, my trousers are almost certainly getting ruined.”

“Oh, Trexel,” said Hartro. “Given your track record with trousers, I wouldn’t count a little semen as ‘getting ruined.’”

This reference to an incident he would kill to erase from memory filled Trexel with shame, disgust, and heightened self-consciousness, but Hartro's frank language tugged at his libido unexpectedly. It was an uneasy mix of feelings. He glared at her and hoped she couldn’t tell. Though her smile broadened nastily at his embarrassment, it didn’t grow shocked or uncomfortable, so he thought he was probably safe.

“Point taken, and I’ll thank you to never bring that up again. How do you even know about that? Did David tell you? No, it must have been someone on the design team who passed me in the hallway. I’ll figure out who did it, and then I’ll—”

“It was you. You told me.” Hartro was annoyed. “I don’t know why, so don’t ask. Can we get back on topic, please?”

“Right. So, no feet.” He bumped his shoe against hers.

“That reduces our choices considerably, but I’ll allow it.” Her lips thinned. “Since we’re supposed to respect each other’s preferences and all.”

“Are you ever going to let me kiss you?” he demanded.

“I’d say you could kiss my feet, but you just vetoed that whole category of activities. I guess you could kiss my knee, or, I don’t know, my elbow. Maybe my hand.”

“That doesn't seem very reciprocal.”

“Oh, Trexel. We’ve not even gotten into reciprocity.” She touched his face, suddenly gentle, and he sucked in a confused breath. “We’ve talked about you kissing me, but we haven’t begun to talk about me kissing you.”

“I’m not sure I grasp the difference,” he said shakily.

“Let me demonstrate,” she said, and kissed him.

It was quick and somewhat drier than he had anticipated. After she drew back, she watched him with a smug expression. She had steadied herself during the act with a hand on his chest, and it lingered, anchoring him in place.

“See? Not a dram of slobber. Not a lick.”

“You hardly opened your mouth,” he pointed out.

The second kiss was longer and a great deal wetter, but he was still forced to acknowledge her mastery.

* * *

Trexel took his leave with mixed relief and regret. He had a mandatory support group to attend. This much-resented obligation had been instituted along with the sobriety implant. At first, Trexel had been required to attend daily meetings; after three months, he’d bargained it down to a weekly event. It was just one hour in a closed space listening to 20-60 people talk about their problems, but he spent the whole week dreading it.

Part of what he loathed was the half-assedness. An anonymous secret society, Trexel felt, should go all in on ceremony. Burn some incense; do some chants; generate a full canon of philosophical texts, not just a couple of pamphlets and the reconstruction of a thousand-year-old book. Though he’d never say so aloud, he wouldn’t have been opposed to some heretical deity worship either, something to make them really earn the hymn for Board’s forgiveness that ended every meeting.

Another thing he hated was how nice everyone acted. He’d met about half the people at his group during his tenure as a barfly, and none of them were nice. If they ran into each other outside the meeting, he doubted any of them would give him the time of day. (He certainly wouldn’t.) While they were in the meeting, though, everyone pretended to care about each other, like distant relatives at holidays or cult members at a ritual sacrifice. They wished each other well using the same canned phrases and pretended to believe it helped. Or maybe they did believe, and he was once again the odd man out.

At least they had the ladder fights. He enjoyed those, in theory if not always in practice. When group members encountered a disagreement over one of the “steps,” or established guiding principles, they were encouraged to board the corresponding stair of a stepladder and try to knock each other off. Whoever stayed on the ladder won the argument.

Trexel had been knocked off many a ladder in his time. He couldn’t engage in any ladder fights this evening, as he was physically distant from his assigned group. While he could have swapped the virtual meeting with a local one, he didn’t feel like venturing out into the cold Martian wastes and introducing himself to a new set of potential opponents. With his luck, they’d all be people he had wronged in the past, and he would wind up thrown off all twelve steps.

* * *

David returned to the suite right before Trexel finished his support group meeting, just in time to overhear the closing hymn to the Board. On the one hand, this was good, as Trexel would be too engrossed in complaining about the meeting to question David’s whereabouts. On the other hand, David would have to hear him complain.

As Trexel’s door opened, David steeled himself. “Hello, Trexel.”

“Did you hear that?” Trexel demanded, bristling with righteous indignation.

“Only a little.” David plopped onto the couch, trying to get comfortable. IMOGEN was in sleep mode, a warm lump in his pocket. “I just got here. I was at a workshop on, um, macramé.”

“Great, don’t care.” Trexel stalked to the kitchen, fetched himself a glass of water, and downed it in one angry gulp. “I’ve had a highly confusing day, and I just spent an hour with 40 idiots. The only scrap of solace I cling to is that I didn’t have to see them in person. Have I told you about this nonsense, David?”

“Almost every day for the past six months, but—go ahead. You know what, Trexel, go ahead.” David closed his eyes and settled in for the rant.

“Well, it’s ghastly. I can’t describe to you how bad it is. You go into a conference room or something and there’s a bunch of people with these stupid flimsy chairs. Everything smells like cigarettes. Everyone’s putting so much sugar in their coffee, it’s like a paste. Half of them are there every time, and the other half only come once.” Trexel paced, warming to his topic.

“At the beginning they make you go around introducing yourselves, and after you say your name, they pound on the table and shout it back at you. You know I love a joyous whoop or two, but it’s just too much, the shouting. And the banter. Cross-talk is forbidden, but they're always yelling out banter. Sometimes there’s a call and response bit—you say your name and people go into a comedy routine about it. Oh, it’s awful. And I can’t even tell you about the singing.”

“I thought you liked singing.”

“Quiet, this is my monologue. Which reminds me! Monologues. David, the way these people can _talk—_ ”

“Sounds like you fit right in,” David yawned.

“You’d think so. You’d think, ‘Old Trexel Geistman, he loves to talk and sing. He’d get on so well with the monologue people.’ But they don’t let you interrupt anyone, and they only want you to talk about certain things. Not my screenplay, for example. No, it’s all about spiritual growth. The program. Your character defects.” Trexel scoffed the scoff of a man who had been knocked off the fourth step many times. “They always want me to talk about my character defects. Why? What are they planning to do with that information?”

“Blackmail you, probably. Ruin your life.” David shifted on the couch.

“Exactly, David. I try to tell them, but they don’t listen. They never listen unless it’s what they want to hear. Like, maybe some of us don’t want to be sober! Maybe some of us are there against our will! Maybe some of us would be happy to whittle away the rest of our pathetic lives on nothing, constantly sick or hungover, just one excess drink away from overbalancing into the abyss. But no, you’re supposed to be grateful. You’re supposed to be trying. You’re supposed to want to get better. Maybe drinking is ‘better’ for me, did you ever think about that?

“And they’re always pushing their ideology on you. They’re all, ‘Oh, Trexel, your middle power can be anything. Your middle power can be that vent covering.’ Am I going to turn my will and my life over to a vent covering? Ha! I’d like to see it take them.”

“Middle power?” said David. He was at the ‘repeating key phrases to make it seem like he was listening’ stage with this particular rant topic, but also had not heard of this before.

“Some rogue chapters talk about a ‘higher power,’ but the Board is obviously the highest power, so it’s a middle power for us.”

“What about IMOGEN?” David felt her vibrate a little after he said this, like hearing her name had woken her up.

“IMOGEN is a being of science and reason, David. She can’t be bothered with base mysticism.”

_Mace Bysticism, on the other hand, is one of Stellar Firma’s biggest clients._

“That’s not a real name, is it? That can’t be a real name.” David sat up. IMOGEN didn’t respond; perhaps she had been sleep-talking.

“Mace Bysticism is very real, David, and he would be hurt to hear you say that.”

“Lucky he’s not here, then.” David rose, eager to speak with IMOGEN privately. “Look, Trexel, I’m happy for you and your court-ordered support group that always seems to make you mad, but I’m tired and I need to meditate. So bye.”

Trexel waved him off. “Dream sweetly, David. But don’t dream of me.”

“You know I don’t dream.”

“Pretty sure you were dreaming last night. I heard you yelling.”

“Maybe it was part of my meditation,” David hedged.

“If you were meditating about”—Trexel imitated David’s voice, overly nasal—“‘oh, no, Trexel, don’t do it! Put me down! It’s too high!’ then sure. But it sounded more like a dream. A fantasy, even.”

“It definitely wasn’t,” said David flatly.

“Are you sure? There’s no shame in it. I prefer to be kept out of other people’s dreams, but sometimes things just happen, I understand.”

“Good night, Trexel.”

“If I hear you dreaming about me again, I’m waking you up,” Trexel called.

* * *

The next day, David and a much refreshed IMOGEN resumed their tour of Martian museums and gardens, this time in a different city at the end of a different train line. Though David tried to relax and enjoy the new sights, he had trouble. He kept imagining himself on trial for library crimes. It hadn’t been his intention to overload the power grid when he plugged IMOGEN in at the library, but intentions had never mattered much in the world he knew.

Guilt wasn’t the only thing that dogged David, it turned out. Lunch had already passed by the time he realized someone was following him.

No matter how he tried, he couldn’t shake them. He left the archives he’d been touring abruptly, tried sneaking out the back entrances of multiple small businesses, and found a hiding place behind the washing machines in a self-service laundromat.

He waited for what seemed like a long time, organs churning in unpleasant ways. Although he heard subtle movement across the room, he caught no glimpse of the other person.

When he finally mustered the courage to emerge, he spotted an envelope on one of the machines that hadn’t been there before. Heart pounding wildly, he took it and opened it.

There was an expired laundry coupon inside.

David searched the whole rest of the laundromat, enlisting IMOGEN to run scans as well, but he couldn’t find anything else.

* * *

Three brooding strangers stared Trexel down across the auditorium seating for the duration of his morning seminar. He left early, but when someone got hold of him while he was passing by and yanked him into a small office, he was sure he was done for. However, it was just Hartro, wanting to work out some nerves. He hardly had a chance to agree before she locked the door.

Hartro was a very forceful kisser, not that Trexel had much to compare her to. An unresisting fish, a floppy-haired accounts manager at one End of Quarter party so deeply buried in the past that he could hardly remember it, and David, on the asteroid: these were the partners that he looked to for precedent. None of them had shoved him against a wall and drawn blood from his lip, nor held his head in place while they tried to choke him with their tongue, hands aggressively roaming his body all the while. Of course, he’d always been the one to initiate before.

“Do you think you could be a bit gentler?” he asked, when she tired of abusing his mouth and moved on to his neck and ear. “You’re being, erm, kind of rough.”

Hartro muttered something against his jaw that felt like _I’ll show you rough,_ but her kisses grew less bruising, her touches less insistent. She bit his ear almost kindly and released him.

“Seriously, is there something the matter?” Now that he had a chance to look, she seemed unwell. She looked frayed around the edges, like a bad holo-copy of herself, and was faintly vibrating with anxiety.

“Why would you say that? Everything is fine.” She tittered and tried to back him against the wall, but he held up his hands to make her stop.

“I’m not a toy, Hartro. You can’t just whisk me away when you need a bit of stress relief. I’m a person—stop laughing, I _am!_ —and I deserve to know when the person who’s… when the person I… Can you just tell me what’s wrong?”

She studied him for a moment, face unreadable, and sagged forward. In a small voice, she said, “I can’t.”

Then, more brightly: “But that was very emotionally intelligent of you, Trexel! If I were your therapist, I’d call this a breakthrough.”

“Emotionally intelligent?”

“Yes. I’d put a heart sticker on your therapy chart to represent the caring you showed.” She laughed. “You shouldn’t worry about me, anyway. Worry about yourself. If I were you, with all the problems you have, I don’t think I’d begin to conceive of worrying about someone else.”

“So what you’re saying is that I’m compassionate and insightful, not a hopeless mess.”

“You are fairly hopeless, and I do think you’re a mess, but I wouldn’t put the two together, no.” She reached for him. “Can we return to the matter at hand?”

He allowed her to kiss him again, at first with exaggerated courtesy and then more naturally. There was something lulling and repetitive about just kissing, trying to anticipate and counter her movements.

Part of him wanted to stop right now, to avoid screwing things up as he predictably would. The other part wanted to do some things he wasn’t sure she’d appreciate.

“You’re oddly quiet, you know,” she told the side of his head. “I had assumed you’d say all kinds of appalling things.”

“I can, if that’s what you like.” His voice felt strained.

“Now that I brought it up, you’ll do it wrong,” she lamented.

“That’s not fair, Hartro. You never give me a chance.”

“Believe me, I’ve given you far more than your fair share of chances.” She smiled against his ear. “Why don’t you take your shirt off?”

“Um.” While in the past Trexel had inhabited his body with a blithe unselfconsciousness that waxed and waned according to his blood alcohol content, he had lost a significant amount of weight in the past six months and felt insecure about the physical changes. But he didn’t feel like he could refuse.

He stepped back. Conscious of her amused gaze, he unzipped his collar slowly, pretending he wanted to tease rather than conceal. He wasn’t sure he could take it if she went after his loose skin or sagging stomach.

“Agh, your chest hair!” Hartro sprang back in earnest horror. “Oh, Board, I had forgotten. Why don’t you keep your shirt on, actually?”

“I’m fine with that,” said Trexel, relieved. He zipped up his shirt again, careful not to snag the zip on his chest hair (which was substantial, and substantially matted). Hartro put her face in her hands. The mood, it seemed, was ruined.

“You could at least comb it,” she said, muffled. “You could… _wash_ it.”

“I do wash it!” he protested. “Just, in a hands off way. I don’t like touching myself more than I have to.”

“Well, if you want me to touch you, you’re going to have to scrub.” She immediately contradicted herself by grabbing both his hands. “Scrub up, Trexel.”

“I’ve been called a scrub before,” Trexel mused, letting her play with their fingers.

“It’s one of those pithy little ironies. You’ve got to scrub if you don’t want to be a scrub.”

Though she’d just insulted him, Trexel felt a sudden glow of affection for her. “Hartro, I don’t think people appreciate your wit enough.”

She smiled at him, surprised and pleased, and for a second his heart turned over.

* * *

Trexel left through the floor vent in Hartro’s closet, hoping to avoid further encounters with his pursuers. Though the way was long and dusty, and he got lost more than once, unfamiliar feelings lingered with him: warmth, a sort of dreaminess, the suspicion that life was worthwhile and interesting after all.

The last was the least convenient to harbor, and he dreaded its departure. Nothing that made him happy ever lasted.

Except what if it did?


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note there is one scene of vomiting near the end of this chapter.

David was staring at nothing, replaying the day’s events over and over in his mind, when Trexel burst into the room.

Out of breath, he announced, “David, I have an important question.”

David’s stomach lurched. He schooled his expression into something neutral and thought hard about macramé.

Trexel said, “It’s about Hartro.” (David relaxed.) “Do you think that Hartro… Do you think that maybe Hartro and I…”

“Are terrible people? Yes.”

Trexel pretended he hadn’t heard this. “Do you think we might work out as, erm, a romantic couple?”

“Why in Board’s name are you asking me? Do you have some sort of crush on Hartro now?” David saw Trexel flinch, and groaned, irritation supplanting his dread. “Don’t tell me, I don’t think I can take it.”

_Forbidden knowledge detected. What is known cannot be unknown._

“Some friend you are,” said Trexel, peevish.

“We’re partners, not friends. We’ve been over the difference.”

“I still consider you a friend.”

“That’s great for you. I know you find relationships very difficult.” In case Trexel took this as an invitation to elaborate, David clarified. “Trexel, I don’t want to hear about your love life, or your aspirations toward a love life, or anything to do with you dating people or having sex. It’s fine for you to do that, just… Don’t tell me about it. At all. Ever.”

“Ah, got it.” Trexel nodded. “You’re jealous.”

“What? No, I am absolutely not jealous.”

“It’s all right, David. It’s a normal human reaction.”

“As you so love to remind me, I’m not human. Why would it make sense for me to be jealous?”

“We can’t control or rationalize our emotions, David. We can only experience them.” Trexel gazed at him in sad understanding. “Until you accept your feelings for me, you’ll never be able to move on.”

“That’s too ludicrous to even get mad about.” David cast a hand over his eyes, feeling drawn into an argument against his will. “Why would I be jealous over you specifically, instead of, say, the concept of having relationships? Clones can’t even get the paperwork for them.”

“Who would you pursue a relationship with, if you could? Think about it. That’s right. Me!” Trexel frowned. “Unless you go for rich idiots with two nipples, in which case Bathin might be more your speed.”

“Dear Board, here it comes.”

“Why do you like him, anyway?” Trexel whirled on David. “You and Hartro. Is it because he’s taller than me? Because he sculpts his chest hair? Because he has a rugged yet romantic side profile?”

“It’s because he’s nice, and you’re an arsehole,” David snapped.

“So you admit it.” Trexel drew in a breath.

David crossed his arms. “Yes, Trexel, I find Bathin attractive. It’s nothing to lose your mind over. I’m not ashamed, and I won’t take it back.”

“IMOGEN, do you hear this?” Trexel pleaded. “Tell me I’m dreaming. Tell me my ears need to be replaced.”

_Service unavailable. Too busy thinking about Bathin’s attractiveness._

Trexel gave a wail of despair and crumpled to the floor. He lay there in a heap while David fetched himself a muffin.

“There’s no hope,” he wept. “I’ll never be good enough for her.”

David retrieved a drink and found some jam for his muffin. It was gilding the lily a bit, but he liked the decadence. (David had encountered lilies for the first time at the garden he visited that morning, including some rather ostentatious pink ones, and thereby gained an appreciation for this previously incomprehensible idiom.) He was going to have a hard time readjusting to clone slurry when they returned to Stellar Firma.

Trexel’s weeping had slowed somewhat. David decided to take pity on him.

“I wouldn’t say there’s no hope,” he hedged, applying jam to a large chunk of muffin. “I mean, she puts her foot in your mouth all the time.”

“She hasn’t done that in months.”

“Maybe she thinks you don’t like it? So she’s trying to respect your boundaries.” David stuffed the piece of muffin in his mouth and tried to concentrate on how different it was from a foot.

“It’s true. I said I wanted nothing to do with her feet.” Trexel gasped. “What if she thinks she doesn’t have a chance with _me,_ because I rejected her feet? I should go back and find her right now.” He made to sit up.

David shook his head. “You shouldn’t just barge in on her. She could be in a meeting or something.”

Trexel scoffed. “Who has time for meetings when love is on the agenda?”

“Um, Hartro, probably? She’s really serious about her career. Since, you know, she tried to kill us over it and all...”

Trexel frowned, tapping his chin. “You may have a point.” He slumped back down. “Oh, David, this is so complicated.”

“Not that I care, but why Hartro?” David asked between bites.

Trexel gazed at the ceiling wistfully. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“I understand she tried to kill me, and I also tried to kill her.” David wrinkled his nose. “So I guess that makes us even? Except I didn’t want to kill her, I was just threatening her. So maybe that makes us uneven again.”

“What’s between Hartro and me,” said Trexel stiffly, “transcends such petty considerations. It is a meeting of the minds. No, of the souls.”

“I thought you were pretty strongly of the position that Hartro had no soul.”

“Her soul was asleep until her passion for me awoke it.”

“Now you’re sounding like a Loulabella Anas-Marum character.” David groaned. “Are you sure she didn’t dose you with something?”

“That’s a keen question, but my implant rejects all intoxicating poisons. If Hartro, pushed to madness by her yearning for me, had selected such a tactic, I’d just turn strange colors and throw it all up. And then I would forgive her.”

“Mm.”

“I would, David. Forgiveness is the soul of love.”

“Please stop talking about souls.” David took the last bite of his muffin. “Anyway, I still don’t get it, and I don’t think I want to.” The conversation had distracted him briefly from his rumination, but his dread and anxiety had crept back in, and he was starting to itch.

Trexel sighed. It was very obnoxious. “That’s all right. Some of us weren’t meant to be lovers.”

“Oh Board, this is going to be intolerable.”

* * *

The following day there was a “human mingle.” Invitees to this mandatory brunch event consisted of delegates from Stellar Firma, Galactonium, and those few other groups of humans that had resisted assimilating to either faction. The number of guests necessitated that it be held in an auditorium rather than a dining area. Head-shaped paper centerpieces adorned the flimsy tables, and a sparkly banner reading “ _HUMANS_ ” hung over the podium.

As Trexel recounted to David, an altercation at the past cycle’s mingle had ended with the entire party being knocked out with sleeping gas and shot into the Martian core. Few were keen to repeat the incident. Therefore, everyone was on their best behavior today, the Concordant administration included. The atmosphere was, appropriately, restrained. The bar had a one-drink limit. Guests were required to adhere to a predetermined set of neutral topics for small talk, helpfully listed on a large wall scroll.

“Celebrity gossip,” David read. “Funny animal stories. Favorite moons of Jupiter… I don’t think I have one of those.”

“When in doubt, David, make it up. My favorite moon of Jupiter is Trebellianica. It’s shaped like a scarab beetle and covered in microvolcanoes that spit flaming ice. Does it exist? No! But no one’s going to challenge me about it. That’s the beauty of small talk.”

As Trexel waxed poetic about the glories of socially sanctioned lying, David looked around the room. While more glances were directed at him and Trexel than before, many of them from little groups conferring together at far tables, the consensus seemed to remain that no one would approach them. Good. He didn't feel like talking to anyone.

The most appealing part of the mingle, at least to David, was the buffet spread. A couple days earlier, he might have snuck some food into a napkin; however, after the past day’s events, he only dared look at it. He tried to ignore his grumbling stomach. He had set aside the last muffin for later, and that would have to suffice. For all he knew, anyway, the food was poisoned.

Trexel couldn’t eat. He kept looking across the room at Hartro, engaged in conversation with the timid young executive (who now wore an arm sling), and sighing. He sighed all through the food line and the beverage line. Once they sat at a table, he angled his chair to watch Hartro and sighed even more.

“Can you stop _fucking_ sighing,” said David under his breath.

“Are you hungry, David?” Trexel pushed his scant plate at David without taking his eyes from Hartro. “You can have my breakfast, I don’t mind. We lovers subsist on finer fare. Glances, you know. Smiles. Moments of regard.”

“Oh great, black coffee and an alkaline plum,” David grumbled. Regardless, he wrapped the plum in a napkin and stashed it in his onesie when he could.

IMOGEN was in his pocket, in sleep mode again. The library power grid hadn’t satisfied her power needs for long. Since early that morning, she’d been doing a countdown of her battery percentage, interspersed with ominous remarks about the electrical properties of different species’ brains. If David wanted to prevent her from either going dark or becoming an energy vampire, he’d have to find another power source soon.

He amused himself by doing a crossword—the tables had placemats with little games on them, full of words like “arbitration” and “settlement” as well as drawings of various beings joining their appendages. Trexel kept getting up from his chair, taking a step or two in Hartro’s direction, and then sitting back down again.

“Can you stop?” said David, after the fifth occurrence of this pattern.

Trexel opened his mouth; David, presaging a lecture on how love could not be stopped, quickly clarified. “Just go over there or don’t. I don’t care either way, but you’re making me motion sick.”

Trexel dipped his head. “Point taken, David. Point taken.”

When David looked up from his crossword, Trexel was striding across the room. David watched him nearly shove the timid executive aside as he interrupted Hartro’s conversation.

The situation was worse than David had thought. He had assumed Trexel’s interest to be one-sided and fanciful, but Hartro’s body language indicated at least some new dimension to the relationship outside Trexel’s mind. While she was careful to keep space between them, she kept tilting toward him, and David observed her touch his arm three times in the span of a minute. In the past, she’d usually angled herself as far away from Trexel as possible, and the only time she touched him had been—

“Ugh,” said David aloud, and shuddered, trying to push all thoughts of feet from his mind. He turned back to his crossword.

A little bit later, he felt someone sit at the table. Thinking Trexel had returned, he looked to the side with a brush-off prepared, and found Trexel’s seat occupied by Sigmund Shankeray.

“Ahh!” David exclaimed, then tried to pass it off as a yawn. “Ahh… hh.”

Sigmund Shankeray smiled blandly. “David 8, is it?” He had oddly luminous teeth, so white they matched his dress shirt. As his tie matched his eyes and his suit matched his hair, altogether he presented an eerily coordinated vision.

“Seven,” said David, trying to come off as vacant and cheerful as the normal clones he’d met.

Sigmund Shankeray leaned in and spoke insinuatingly. “It’s all right, you don’t have to act. I’m already aware of your… attitude issue.”

David’s stomach plummeted. “I’m sorry?”

The other clicked his tongue. “You’re not good at this.”

“Not good at what, sir?”

“You’ve got the intonation all wrong, and—how can I say this? There’s no smile behind your eyes.” He peered into David’s eyes. “Yes, there’s usually a little smiley face pasted next to the barcode, and you haven’t got it. But don’t worry. I don’t think anyone else has noticed what you really are.”

“What’s that?” said David, still trying for innocence.

“Oh, I think you know.”

“I very much don’t.”

Sigmund Shankeray glanced around, then leaned in even closer and dropped his voice to a whisper. “An associate of mine shared some interesting video footage the other day. It showed you walking into a building, and all the lights in the block going out. Did you know how much power an IMOGEN needs to function?” 

When David didn’t reply, he continued. “I think you do. I think you’re a spy, and you’ve been masquerading as a clone to steal IMOGEN, brainwash her, and sell her to our competitors.”

David felt IMOGEN vibrate a little, probably objecting to the idea that someone could brainwash her.

“Um. What’s a spy?” he tried.

“Stop playing dumb. I thought we might work out a deal, but I can just hand you over to the Board instead. Your choice.” Sigmund Shankeray watched David, waiting for him to react.

“What kind of deal?” said David at last.

“There’s a memorial luncheon tomorrow for the former President Van Schuten. Meet me in the private booth behind the lavafall, and we’ll discuss in more detail then.”

David had a response to this, but was interrupted before he could deliver it.

“David, we need to leave,” said Trexel, out of breath. “I have to shower, and—what are you doing in my seat? Get out.” He dismissed Sigmund Shankeray with a flick of his hand, glanced around him, and then paled. “We need to leave _immediately._ David, forget the plum—”

David followed Trexel’s gaze to the door, where a young woman in a purple jacket had just entered. She was looking around with an amused expression.

“What plum?” said David hollowly, but Trexel seized his hand and dragged him towards the service exit.

* * *

“Oh Board, oh Board, oh Board.” David paced back and forth, wringing his hands. “He knows. He _knows._ Oh Board, I’m in so much trouble.”

Trexel walked past him, toweling his hair. “Can you keep it down, David? Your constant moaning interfered with my shower song.”

“How many showers do you need?” David whirled on him. “You’ve been in and out of there for hours. Does Hartro like you pruny? Is that her other kink?” Trexel’s hurry to exit the mingle was only tangentially related to the purple-jacketed human’s appearance; Hartro, it seemed, had ordered him to prepare for a tryst.

“Don’t be nasty, David.”

“I’ll be as nasty as I like,” David snapped. “I’m in peril.” Then he wrung his hands and began to pace again. “Oh Board, oh Board, oh Board…”

 _There’s a simple solution here._ Though IMOGEN spoke slowly and tiredly, there was a hint of glee in her voice.

“For the last time, we are not going to kill him. Murder just makes things more complicated.”

“Not in my experience!” said Trexel heartily. Then he frowned. “Well, actually…”

“What if we locked him in a box? We could put a timer on it, so people found him before he starved. Or we could dose him with a powerful sedative, so he just slept for the rest of the conference. But where would we find drugs like that?” David massaged his temples.

Trexel said, “I have drugs, but they’re in my sobriety implant. It’s hard to share them because they’re being continuously released inside my body.”

“That’s nice. I didn’t ask.”

“Just trying to be helpful,” Trexel sniffed. “Too bad I’m useless. Now, someone like _Bathin_ could probably figure out how to extract the drugs for you.”

“Why do you keep bringing him up? Normally you can’t even stand hearing his name, but this whole trip it’s been nothing but Bathin, Bathin, Bathin.”

“I don’t know, David. Maybe it’s because, on some level, I know he’s everything I’m not—handsome, well-liked, competent, probably not responsible for millions of deaths via poorly conceived planet design. So when I feel insecure, my mind leaps to Bathin and how much more capably he could handle whatever mess I’m in.” Trexel paused. “Or maybe it’s because I have telepathic powers, and I just pick up on how much you think about him.”

“Mm.”

“Would you like me to channel him? Here, I’ll be Bathin for you.”

“I’d prefer if you didn’t—”

Trexel affected a deep, faux-suave voice. “Hello, I’m Bathin. I have perfectly scrubbed chest hair and smell like oakmoss and bergamot. Everyone thinks I’m better than Trexel, but I’m really the worst.”

“Okay, this is stupid.”

Trexel switched to a higher, more nasal voice, imitating David. “Oh Bathin, marry me. Take me to your ancestral palace, which you have because you’re a duke—”

“I don’t sound like that,” said David indignantly. “And he’s not a duke, he’s a Great Duke. We’ve been over this.”

“Take me to your great ancestral palace,” Trexel continued in an even higher and more nasal voice, “and we can reenact the cloak room scene from _The Contortionist’s Holiday Revenge._ ”

“That’s even less accurate than the voice you were using before. But, you know, we have an actual problem to solve here—”

Trexel’s voice now resembled that of a gremlin. “We can reenact the stable scene from _Hooves After Midnight,_ and the operating room scene from _Surgery of Love._ We can even do the tentacle pit scene from _The Shoggoth’s Betrothed._ Oh, Bathin, I want to do every kind of romance with you, because I love you and not Trexel!” The last sentence was punctuated by a sob.

“Oh, come off it,” David burst in. “You’re the one who’s jealous. You’re still mad that I rejected you, and you’re projecting it onto me.”

Trexel broke character, pointing at David and laughing madly. “Ah, but I was being you! You just accused yourself of being jealous!”

“You are _impossible_ to talk to,” David seethed. “I’ve only stopped panicking because I’m so annoyed.”

“Admit it, I tricked you.” 

“I never thought I’d say this, but I feel sorry for Hartro. I hope she dumps you.” David turned on his heel and stormed to his room.

When David came back a minute later to retrieve IMOGEN, Trexel was already running another shower. Through the door, David could hear him humming a love song, attempting to harmonize with the buzz of an electric razor.

* * *

Hartro’s schedule that day was tight. While Trexel showered and David schemed, she had been in a workshop doing mistrust falls. After a quick trip to the on-site physician, there wasn’t much time before she had to get ready for her night out with Sigmund Shankeray and the executives.

Trexel had been with her for ten minutes of the hour she had allotted to him, and he’d already stretched her patience to its limit. First there was the sad bundle of flowers he had thrust at her, which she recognized from a hotel decoration. Then he’d improvised a lyric poem about her feet. After she’d managed to redirect him, she had discovered the condition of his hands—so _pruny_ —and cajoled him into taking his shirt off, and now…

“You shaved your chest?” Hartro was appalled.

Trexel had the gall to appear hurt. “You didn’t like the hair.”

“This isn’t better.” She pinched the bridge of her nose, feeling exhaustion flare behind her temples. “I can hardly look at you.”

“Here, I’ll grow it back.” He addressed his bare, horrifying chest, tearing at it with both hands. “Grow, I exhort you! Grow!”

“Trexel, stop. It’s already red, and you’re scratching it, you’re making it worse.” She caught and stilled his hands, then stepped back and surveyed him with folded arms. “I have to say, this isn’t a promising beginning.”

“Let me start over,” he begged. “I can do better, Hartro. Just give me ten minutes, some superglue, a packet of novelty feathers… Maybe a bit of carpet. Or I could paint myself! Body paint’s sexy, right? Here, I’ll just nip out—”

“I don’t want you to paint yourself, you imbeci—you very impractical person,” she snapped, and groaned when he started putting his shirt back on. “No, leave it off. And go sit down.”

“On the floor?” Trexel seemed to be nearing some kind of hysteria, his voice gone high and quavery. “Or do you want me on the…?”

Hartro rolled her eyes. “Oh, for Board’s sake. On the bed.”

Trexel sat. “Is this all right? Or should I, you know, sort of lounge?” He attempted a pose that would have broken a weaker spirit to witness. She must have gone mad; somehow it wasn’t unappealing.

Hartro grimaced and shut her eyes. “Just shut up and don’t move.”

Amazingly, Trexel obeyed this command for the duration of her deep breathing exercises, or at least avoided making noise while he fidgeted. When she opened her eyes again, he was on the same part of the bed and watching her anxiously.

“Good job,” she said, with all the scant warmth she could muster.

“I… Really? Hartro, I think that’s the first time you’ve ever said that to me.”

“If you keep quiet and stay still, I might say it again.”

Trexel opened his mouth to say something else, but thought better of it. This had always been her favorite state for him: silent, wide-eyed, and afraid of her. That she enjoyed it a great deal more in this context probably said some things she didn’t want to listen to.

While he stared, she unbuttoned the top two buttons of her tight yet sensible blouse and took a step forward.

“Very good,” Hartro said, letting her lips curve slightly upward.

In the moment before she stooped to kiss him, she considered that she might regret this even more than anticipated. But then she was pressing him back onto the bed, and she forgot.

* * *

In his bathtub nest, David fumed. He fumed and fumed. He spent such a long time fuming that he missed IMOGEN’s warning beeps, and indeed the announcement that she was shutting down. She was so drained of power that her display couldn’t show the “DANGER, LOW BATTERY” message anymore, and her distress light blinked about once a minute instead of every five to ten seconds.

“Well, this really sucks,” said David.

It seemed he was on his own. That was fine. He retrieved the slightly bruised plum from his pocket, took a bite, and started to formulate a strategy.

* * *

In the aftermath, Hartro took stock of her current situation. While sticky and uncomfortable, she was mostly clothed aside from her blouse and one stocking. Trexel was—she couldn’t look at him—likely still naked, and making vague sleepy noises. They had gone fifteen minutes over the allotted hour. She wanted to cancel her plans and do it again. It hadn’t been particularly good or anything; she just wanted to.

Swallowing back rising panic, she tried to mentally reframe the experience. This was… It was all hormones. She’d be back in her right mind soon. And the afternoon hadn’t been a complete loss, had it? Significant elisions here, a little embellishment there, and the experience could serve as a decent cocktail party anecdote someday. It was funny that he’d shaved his chest, right? The whole thing was funny. It didn’t mean anything to her.

Trexel groped for her hand, startling her out of her contemplation. While she watched—frozen, horrified—he brought it to his face and kissed it. He seemed to be stranded on some plane of reverie, looking up at her in a worshipful daze.

Hartro snatched her hand back and wiped it forcefully on his discarded trousers.

“Well, that’s that,” she said briskly. “Congratulations, you’re not a virgin anymore.”

The spell broke. He blinked at her, his red chest heaving. “What?”

“You’re welcome, Trexel. Now get out.”

“You can’t just kick me out,” he protested, though she was already gathering his clothes. She had too much experience wrangling him, and he too little with this particular type of post-sex lassitude; she had hustled him back into his trousers and halfway out the door before he realized what was happening.

He tried to keep an arm in the door, but she pinched it, hard. The door sealed shut behind her while he was yelling and rubbing at the affected skin.

He pounded on the door. “Hartro. Hartro, come back!”

Multiple locks clicked, and a security warning buzzed at his hand. When he knocked again, it shocked him. Trexel, still processing an unfamiliar rush of neurotransmitters, tumbled to the hallway floor and wept.

* * *

David had a plan.

It was, he would later admit, a stupid plan.

If IMOGEN had been accessible, she could have discouraged him from it, but IMOGEN was not accessible. If even Trexel had been there, he might have helped David recognize the flaws in his reasoning (purposefully or not). But Trexel was otherwise engaged, and therefore David proceeded unopposed with his strategy of dressing up as Trexel to challenge Sigmund Shankeray to a duel.

Once he was certain Trexel had left, David crept into his room and looked in his closet. As expected, it was already disastrously messy. David located two pairs of glasses, the least objectionable among several disquieting jumpsuits, and some boots that he adored as soon as he put them on.

Going through Trexel’s things was always stressful. One never knew what to expect. David stopped himself after he found a large artistic paperweight that could do as a weapon in a pinch. His new crochet hooks would work as well; part of him grieved to use them, while a secret, darker part hoped to christen them in blood. As a final item, he isolated the most intimidating utensil in the kitchen, a root vegetable masher. Thus outfitted, he went to evaluate himself in the mirror.

No wig! He had forgotten a wig. The glasses did a lot for his face, but his cheeks weren’t red enough, and he was far too tall. The tallness, he could use the boots to explain—but was there some way to conceal his face and head at the same time? He recalled a scene from _The Contortionist’s Holiday Revenge_ where the contortionist had donned a long black cloak to infiltrate a high society costume party.

None of the sheets were dark or clean enough to serve as a cloak. With a spare tablecloth and the complimentary hotel sewing kit, David speedily fashioned a cape. A last sweep of Trexel’s room revealed a hat under the bed. David put this on over the cape hood and was pleased to do a double-take at his reflection.

Now there was only the matter of IMOGEN. Easily solved! David felt uncomfortable bringing her with him, quiet and motionless as she was, so he stashed her in the wall safe and selected the highest security setting. Satisfied with these preparations, he proceeded on his way.

He boarded the elevator minutes before a wailing Trexel dropped from a ceiling vent into the hallway.

* * *

When the first throwing-dart whizzed past his head and embedded itself in the wall, David was startled. 

When the throwing-dart was followed by a large, angry alien shouting about the curse Trexel had put on him, David began to rethink his plan.

* * *

Hartro was tense. She was three drinks deep and still couldn’t relax. She, Sigmund Shankeray, and the other executives in her group were out at a charming little restaurant, tucked away in a side street so quiet that they had the whole bar area to themselves.

No one had been dosed with truth serum; no one was being made to carry bricks of dry ice on their head; the tableau was altogether devoid of interrogation devices, loyalty testing equipment, or anything that could be used as an obstacle course. It was a perfect opportunity for networking. Yet Hartro simply could not take advantage.

On her left, Sigmund had just told a delightful joke, but she found it difficult to muster the appropriate mirth. On Sigmund’s other side, Gamma Delt was trying to steer the discussion toward their career prospects without being obvious about it; Hartro felt more like tearing off their arm sling than interjecting with a graceful segue. The evening was less than half over, and she already wanted to go home. Perhaps she just needed to drink more.

The conversation had turned to fashion. Sigmund had a lovely new pair of holographic shoes, which he made sure everyone admired. She normally loved discussing shoes, but tonight she… Agh! When would she stop feeling guilty and focus on what she needed to do? It had to be soon.

“Hello, esteemed colleagues,” said Trexel, from her right.

Hartro nearly threw her glass.

She leaned away as he insinuated himself at the bar counter, paranoid that any contact between them would tell everyone what they’d done that afternoon. He appeared to have showered again, and wore clothes that were almost professional, with no wild patterns or suspicious stains. She tried to tune back into the ongoing conversation while he hailed the bartender and ordered a drink.

He climbed into the seat next to her—she disguised her flinch as a fun, sexy stretch—and cleared his throat a few times, but offered no further introduction.

“Do I know you?” Sigmund peered around her, smiling quizzically.

“What a question,” said Trexel. “Can one person know another, truly?” There was a hoarseness to his voice, like he’d been crying for a while. Hartro was familiar with the sound. She usually felt a lot more gleeful about being the cause of it.

“Ah, I’ve got it. Geistman.” Sigmund snapped his fingers. “I don’t think you were invited. Can you leave?”

“No.”

“No?”

The bartender placed a glass and a full pitcher of deep green liquid in front of Trexel. It smelled minty. Without looking away from Sigmund, Trexel picked up the pitcher and took a swig. “No.”

“Call Concordant Security,” said Sigmund to Gamma Delt in an undertone, and leaned over to speak to Hartro. “Wasn’t this your subordinate, Hartro?”

“Just for a cycle or two. We hardly know each other.” She felt Trexel stiffen and heard him grumble under his breath, something that sounded like _Apparently._ Oh, please. He had no one but himself to blame for his dashed expectations.

“Is that so?” Sigmund asked. “Because I remember that you brought him up as a major trial you were going through. A real thorn in your side.”

Hartro forced a laugh. “Well, haha, every molehill seems like a mountain while you’re climbing it.”

“Not really,” said Sigmund pleasantly.

“You’ve been climbing me, have you, Hartro?” whispered Trexel. “Are you sure you want them to know that?”

“Shut up,” she hissed. “How did you find me?”

“You told me about it—you know, _earlier._ It wasn’t hard.”

“I’m going to get you a new tracker,” she said out the side of her mouth, “and I’m going to put a thing in it that shocks you every time you come near me without my permission.” She turned away and found Sigmund watching them curiously, along with several colleagues from further down the bar.

“Security is on their way,” Gamma Delt announced. Whispers rose. Trexel took the pitcher and began, methodically, to chug it.

Hartro downed her drink and pushed away from the counter. “I’m going to the toilet.”

She stood at the sinks for a while, splashing water on her face and cursing at the mirror. Inevitably, Trexel ruined everything for her. Why had she thought she could escape it this time? It was clearly outside of her power.

When Hartro returned to the main room of the bar, a fight had broken out—or, at least, Trexel had done his best to instigate one. Sigmund had been coaxed or goaded to his feet, but seemed unwilling to move.

“Come at me, coward!” Trexel swayed from side to side.

“Are you even supposed to be drinking? Trexel, you’re not supposed to be drinking.” Hartro reached a hand towards him before thinking better of it, and he reared violently back.

“Don’t speak to me, you succubus.”

“You look like you’re going to be sick.” In spite of herself, she felt concern. He was starting to turn yellow.

“I hate you,” said Trexel. “I hate you more than I’ve ever hated anyone. Never look at me again.”

He rocked on his feet, like a wave had gone through him. Then he lurched forward and spewed crème de menthe all over Sigmund Shankeray’s beautiful holographic shoes.

* * *

By the time David finally made it back, he had been hunted through most of the hotel and convention center. The chase had lasted the whole night, infringing on the morning’s small hours.

First there had been the curse recipient; then a trio of silent nuns; then a representative from the Alliance of Risk Management Liabilities, who claimed to have something for him to sign but appeared to be concealing a sword; then a bounty hunter disguised as an emergency exit; then a polar bear’s furious wife. Everyone David met seemed to be Trexel’s enemy. When he eluded one, another popped up around the corner.

There was no chance to shed his disguise. Indeed, the time he tried, the nuns just flourished their sacred weapons and stared at him twice as murderously.

David’s slime had proven both a blessing and a curse, in that it let him slip from even the most fervent grips but left a telling trail behind him. At least he’d been able to misdirect his pursuers by spilling a giant candle, which at the dawn’s encroachment more resembled a tureen of molten wax.

The moment he entered the hotel suite, he knew something was wrong. Mostly because the kitchen was cleaner than he’d left it, but also because loud wailing was coming from Trexel’s bedroom. Rolling his eyes, David shed his hat, his glasses, and the cape’s remaining tatters and went to check on him.

“Aha, how the turntables—agh!”

Aghast, David took in the scene: the safe broken into, the furniture overturned, and Trexel weeping in a pile of bedclothes on one half of the torn-open mattress.

“Close the door.” Trexel turned over and mashed his face into a pillow.

As David came closer, he perceived a strong stink of mint. The competing stench of alcohol, and the frisson of vomit alongside it, almost constituted a surprise.

“What happened?” he demanded.

“It’s over,” said Trexel, muffled. “My heart is broken. Leave me here to die.”

“What’s over?” Sudden rage replaced David’s bewilderment. “Are you seriously upset about Hartro right now? We’ve been robbed!”

“It’s the pathetic fallacy, David.” Trexel rolled onto his side, fixing David with a look. Bits of mattress stuffing clung to his clothes and face, and his skin was moderately jaundiced. “I think I was escorted back here by security, so they may have done it. Doesn’t really matter to me.”

“Security? Why were you—oh Board, IMOGEN.” David ran to his own room.

It was too little, too late. The wall safe was open and empty. No matter how David searched, or pleaded, or offered to let her use his brain for electrical juice, IMOGEN was nowhere to be found.


End file.
